


Birds of a Feather

by Mari_kel



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, At least towards one another, Discrimination, Feral Birdman Uchiha Madara, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Good Uchiha Clan, Healthier at least, Healthy Relationships, Idiots in Love, It Gets Sickeningly Sweet, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Senju Butsuma is NOT a Good Dad, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff Sweet, Uchiha Izuna Lives, Uchiha Izuna is a Little Shit, Uchiha Madara-centric, Uchiha Tajima is a Good Dad, Uchiha are descended from Tengu, Warring States Period (Naruto), Why Did I Write This?, Worldbuilidng, that's why
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24385219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_kel/pseuds/Mari_kel
Summary: A complete canon rewrite where the Uchiha are just a little more than human, a little more like true family, and a little more fire-happy.The world may fear and hate them, but Madara is their beloved son and he will do anything to protect his family.
Relationships: Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama, Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Izuna & Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Madara & Uchiha Tajima
Comments: 95
Kudos: 305
Collections: Best of Naruto Fanfics





	1. Prologue: First Memory

**Author's Note:**

> During stressful times (i.e. finals) my brain entrenched itself in the Naruto fandom and refused to move. Now, I haven't watched Shippuden since I was like...15? Maaaaybe 16? And I wasn't in the fandom then so I was completely ignorant to the beauty of Hashimada. And then, low and behold, after a couple of fanfic binges, YouTube clips, scrolling through Tumblr and Pixiv, and rewatchings the war arc...here I am. And by god, I'm late to the party but I'm here to contribute!
> 
> It's in the tags but I want to reiterate: THIS IS NOT CANON-COMPLIANT. Like...at all. We got ourselves the Warring States period, the Senju, the Uchiha, the boys, and one of the gayest relationships I've ever seen. Eventually Konoha will be founded. That's all I'm promising. Plus, I don't remember all the nitty-gritty details of Naruto's 400+ episodes and since a lot is being overhauled, I'm just kinda doing my thing and making it up as I go along! 
> 
> First and foremost: POWERS
> 
> Powerscaling in Nautro is...uh, well...*that* 
> 
> This is one of the biggest changes right off the bat. Basically, I'm scaling down ninjutsu (and genjutsu technically) in general, everybody is going to rely a lot more on taijutsu and kenjutsu. We have our five elements and in order to use the element, you have to have an affinity for it, if you don't it's impossible. This also covers weird yin/yang affinities and Hiden techniques so many clans have no elemental affinity.
> 
> For example:  
> The Nara clan's shadow technique is listed as a yin release, so their members have yin affinities. They can use the shadow technique but unless they're born with a second affinity (which is rare), they don't have access to the five elements. 
> 
> Some kekkei genkai also take the place of elemental affinities. 
> 
> For example:  
> The Hyuuga clan's byakugan takes the place of elemental/yin/yang affinity, but they have their byakugan abilities and the techniques developed alongside it. 
> 
> Genjutsu is mostly untouched. Those with yin affinities use it easily, but it's not restricted to only yin affinities. (The same principle applies to yang affinities and taijutsu.) HOWEVER, Izanami and Izanagi don't exist. The Sharingan is getting a soft nerf because of the affinity rules, but still has a base level genjutsu, general powerup, and the ability to memorize everything it sees. Mangeko gets a general power-up, Susano'o, and ONE super special power. 
> 
> I'm also including extreme specialties in the category of pseudo-Hiden techniques, like the Uzumaki and their sealing. Sealing can technically be used by anyone trained in it and many do, but there are special Uzumaki techniques that they keep to themselves because they don't usually have other affinities. 
> 
> Space-Time Ninjutsu is a fucking *mess* that I'm still working through but considering half of it, and other jutsu that can't be categorized easily, all seem to be created by Tobirama, it won't affect anything immediately. 
> 
> I hope this is understandable! I feel like canon sorta already does this, but I want to make it clear that these are pretty hard limits and rules. It *is* possible to have a kekkei genkai and an elemental affinity (*cough*Uchiha*cough*) but it's rare and usually has an explanation to how. 
> 
> Second: Culture/History
> 
> I'll keep this one short. The anime flashbacks only showed the Senju compound (unless I just like...missed that completely) and implied small communities have formed but no large scale cooperative projects between clans, even if they're allied. It's very much a dog-eat-dog world with the poor civilian settlements caught in the middle.
> 
> Since there is no 'village' as a central home, I've taken the liberty of exploring the clans' (mainly Uchiha and Senju) cultures before they came together as a village. Some clans settle in place for a decade or so before moving to a new area (Akimichi, Hatake), others move every few years or as needed but still have semi-permanent settlements (Senju, Nara) and others are extremely nomadic and move with every season or have a spring/fall migration that can take them out of Fire Country (Uchiha, Inuzuka).
> 
> On this note, since the story will mostly be from Madara's viewpoint, I've kinda shoved a whole bunch of elements together to create a nomadic culture for the Uchiha, but one that draws heavily from Shintoism for religious beliefs (canonically the Uchiha dojutsu powers are named after Shinto gods, but I am not a practicer so please correct me if I get information wrong). The rest are individual elements plucked from other cultures or completely made up by me to fit the story. 
> 
> Now, with all that out of the way, enjoy!

Madara’s first memory was his mother’s story.

He remembers being curled up next to her side, Izuna’s drooping head on his shoulder. On her other side the twins, Yuuto and Reo were sprawled out, fast asleep, and in her arms his youngest brother, Kaito, not yet old enough to walk. The central fire burned bright and heavy in front of them, his younger brothers too small to maintain their own inner fires and push the winter chill back.

Mother was running a hand through his hair, sharp nails trailing over his scalp. Madara fought to keep his eyes open, blinking blurrily up at her.

“Still awake, sweet one? You can go to sleep, you know,” she whispered.

“’m not tired,” he muttered, eyelids fluttering shut before opening again. Father and the other shinobi were out on a contract. They were supposed to return tonight and he wanted to see them in safe before he fell asleep. He would be joining them soon, he was already five winters and had seen the mantel Father made for him, just a little too big so he’d have room to grow into it. He was the firstborn of Tajima and Kou, he was going to lead the Uchiha clan, he could stay up a little longer.

“Of course,” Kou laughed, dragging her nails a little harder and making Madara slump heavily against her. Her hand caught and she plucked something out of his hair and held it up to the light. He heard her chuckle and managed to crack open his eyes again.

“Mother?”

“Look, you’re losing your down,” Madara blinked and squinted at the fuzzy black puff between her black talons.

“Am I gonna get a feather soon?” He asked, perking up. Most Uchiha had feathers in their hair, their own or special ones woven in for achievements, but no one his age had any yet. He heard Hikaku brag that he was losing all his down and he’d get a feather any day. Madara _had_ to have some. Mother didn’t even have hair on the left side of her head because there were so many feathers!

“Probably,” her hand probed over his scalp, feeling for… “ah, right here,” she tapped a spot on the left side of his head, almost at his hairline. “I can feel the start of the shaft,” she smiled down at him and all his lethargy was gone. Careful of Izuna, Madara raised his hand to poke at the spot.

“I don’t feel anything,” he pouted up at her, “are you sure?”

“Yes, sweet one,” Kou pulled him close, “I’m positive.”

“Then…you’ll tell me the story? Since I have a feather?” Madara asked.

“The story that you already know? That everyone knows?” She teased, ruffling his hair and making Madara squawk in protest. Izuna shifted on his shoulder, mumbling something under his breath and burrowing closer.

“ _Mother_ ,” he whined, staring up at her with pleading eyes. He vaguely knew it, just like everyone vaguely knew why they were always fighting the Senju. But it was different to be _told_. Different because you had to have a developed sign, a feather or talon, a tooth too sharp to be normal, or odd red spots creeping across your face.

“Alright, alright, settle in,” Kou cleared her throat and smiled down at him. “Once, when the gods still freely roamed the land the tengu, legendary protectors, guarded their sacred sites. One day a human approached the mountain-whose-name-is-lost-to-time. She came to pray at the shrine of Amaterasu but an evil, wicked man hired an elite group of shinobi to assassinate her. However, they underestimated the woman, for she was no mere mortal. She was an _Uchiha._ Uchiha Ai.”

Madara’s breath caught, his hands clenched in his mother’s nemaki.

“She slaughtered her would-be assassins and not a single drop of blood stained her clothes. The tengu who guarded the mountain arrived as the last assassin dropped to the ground. Ai turned, her sharingan still activated, and met the guardian’s eyes. Theirs was a love at first sight. Two great warriors who recognized themselves in the other. However the tengu was bound to his mountain and the Uchiha to her clan and neither could break their sacred oaths.

But their love was so great that it drew even the Sun Goddess’ attention. She looked upon the lovers and wept, she was so moved. A tear of pure fire fell from Heaven and landed on Ai and she was blessed with the first, and strongest, fire affinity in the ancient lands. Her black hair turned to feathers, her teeth sharpened to points, her nails lengthened to talons, and her face turned a brilliant red, a rival to the sunrise itself. Ai was blessed and her divine gifts passed through her line to all of her descendants, allowing the Uchiha to rise and dominate the land.”

“What happened?” Madara asked. _Why did we fall?_ Goes unspoken.

“The gods were lost and their guardians with them,” Kou said softly, rubbing the arch of his cheekbone. “We alone carry their legacy with us,” she reached up to touch the feathers in her hair and flick the black talons that grew from her fingertips, “but it is a legacy of power and love, sweet one. Never forget that,” Kou kissed his forehead.

“Tell me…tell me the one ‘bout Indra…” Madara said, but his eyes slipped shut as his mother’s words echoed in his head.

_It’s a legacy of power and love._

Madara’s earliest memory was his mother’s story.

It was also his last happy memory of her.

Uchiha Kou returned to the battlefield two weeks later and was cut down by a combined Senju-Sarutobi force. She died protecting her firstborn, with more than fifty dead from her katon.

Madara held Kaito, Izuna and the twins clinging to him as Tajima lit her pyre. Each of them had one of her feathers braided in their own hair in memory. Madara stared up at the sky, following the plume of smoke for the dead Phoenix Queen as tears slid silently down his cheeks.


	2. Dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Madara & Izuna: I love my brother and would literally die for him. 
> 
> Also Madara & Izuna: *constantly bickering, pushing each other around, trying to show the other up in training, threatening/pranking one another, and just generally being nosy assholes to one another*
> 
> ...I love this kind of sibling dynamic *so* much. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Madara wakes at the first light of dawn, with the words, _it’s a legacy of power and love,_ on the tip of his tongue.

He sits up, pushing away the thin blanket on his futon as he fiddles with the bound memorial feathers hanging down to touch his left cheek. A fully formed adult contour feather and three delicate child-sized semi-plumes. Kaito’s was barely more than down. Above the bound feathers were four small red bone beads with a name carefully etched into each.

_Three brothers and a mother._

He wasn’t strong enough to protect them.

“Aniki?” Madara turns as his brother rolls over to face him. Izuna isn’t as sensitive to the sun’s presence, but after years he has the uncanny ability to wake just as Madara does.

“What?” Madara asks as he looks around their home, he can see their father’s empty futon across the central fire. Despite their father being clan head, their yurt is small. Izuna’s futon is nearest to the fire and Madara’s to the circular wall, but he could easily reach out and touch his brother’s head if he wanted to. Everything they own is packed in a wooden chest each, their cooking supplies next to the hearth, and the shrine to the gods and their ancestors at the head of the yurt _._

“You’re brooding again, I can feel it from here,” Izuna snickers.

“I’m not brooding!”

“Are too.”

“I am not!”

“Are too.”

Before he can smother Izuna’s smug face, the reed curtain that marks the entrance to their yurt is pulled back and Tajima steps in.

“Boys,” Madara and Izuna snap to attention and turn towards him, “we’re training today.”

Madara scrambles up but not before pushing Izuna back down when he tries to stand. His younger brother goes sprawling backward with a squawk and Madara races to his father’s side as he makes his way to the fire. Tajima chuckles, a small smile softening a face ravaged by stress and heartbreak. He ruffles Madara’s hair as Izuna stands and digs through his storage chest.

“I can’t believe you slept in your training clothes. Your futon must be filthy, aniki.” He sticks his tongue out but Madara sniffs and raises his chin. He’s already nine winters old and had his first kill almost three summers ago. He’s practically an _adult_ , he won’t rise to his baby brother’s taunts…again. It has nothing at all to do with Tajima’s amused gaze.

They sit together as Father serves them breakfast, rice and salted venison from their winter stores. Madara can’t wait until the hunting and foraging parties go out. He’s desperate for fresh food, practically salivating at the thought of fresh rabbit or the budding springberries he saw when they were setting up the compound.

Breakfast is quiet but only because Madara and Izuna are too busy shoveling food into their mouths to speak or start squabbling. Since it’s a training day, _Father’s training day_ , they don’t lounge around the fire for an extra quarter-hour as they sip their tea.

Instead, Tajima drains his cup and stands.

“Come.”

Madara and Izuna scramble, grabbing their katanas as Father pulls the curtain back and they slip outside, greeting the bustling compound in the early dawn light.

The newly set-up spring compound is set in several layered rings around the central point of the camp, the Big Yurt. The largest, most elaborate enclosure of the Uchiha compound, it’s where clan meetings and dinners are held. The clan head’s yurt, and his most trusted generals’, are set in the center ring. Close to the Big Yurt, but close to the forest to fend off attacks. Madara glances at Hikku’s yurt that stands to the right of theirs and Naori’s to the left. No smoke wafts above their tops, they must already be at the dancing ring. 

Father leads them to the edge of the compound and Madara sees his age-mates dancing while Naori’s mother, Kaede watches on. Like all Uchiha, she has dark hair and eyes but Kaede is unusually tall and broad, even for other Uchiha women, Father’s head barely reaches her shoulders. Her hair is gathered in a high ponytail with a few blue-black feathers glinting inside while a gold-tipped one is positioned in the place of honor, just above her widow’s peak. Six memorial feathers and red beads touch her left cheek.

“Tajima-sama,” Kaede says and dips her head to him. She remains respectful for only a few seconds before her lips curl, “you look distinguished as ever.”

Father groans and rubs the growing white spots at his temples, they made his memorial feathers and the red clan-head feather stick out even more. Madara has seen several of his cousins poke fun at his father for them. Most Uchiha died without a single streak of gray in their black hair, it was an odd rarity to see it. The only person with white streaks was Elder Kisho and he was almost _sixty._

“I guess it’s to be expected, I’m almost thirty winters,” Tajima sighs as Kaede laughs.

“Are you teaching them kenjutsu today?” 

“Until the scouts and their crows return, at least. There’s a rumor that there’s a new settlement not too far from here,” Tajima says.

“Civilian?”

“Supposedly. Just over the western ridge.”

“They weren’t here two springs ago,” Kaede says, rubbing her chin. Madara is trying to listen, he’s going to be clan head so he needs to know stuff like this, but Izuna is tugging on his sleeve, distracting him.

“We have been in Earth Country for the last two springs. They’re either brave or stupid to settle so close.” Madara knows most of the civilians are scared of them, more so than other ninja clans. Even though the Uchiha travel every season, sometimes out of Fire Country altogether, no one settles near their old encampments, even if they never settle exactly in the same place twice.

 _It’s cursed land,_ he’d heard an old civilian woman mutter in a no-name town on the edge of the Land of Rivers. Only Father’s hand on his shoulder and the knowledge that if he started something they couldn’t restock their meager medical supplies held his tongue.

“Who knows, maybe they’re like that little village in the Land of Iron? Part of the old beliefs,” Kaede grins.

“It’d be nice to walk into town without henges.”

“Aniki, come _on_. I wanna dance,” Izuna whines. Father and Kaede stop talking.

“Good luck, Tajima-sama,” Kaede bows and winks at Madara before letting out two short whistles. Naori and Hikaku break apart from their taijutsu dance, panting and sweaty as they run up to Kaede. “Get your weapons, Tajima-sama is giving a kenjutsu demonstration.”

Naori and Hikaku run off as Father leads him and Izuna to the dancing ring. There’s been no ninjutsu this morning so nothing is on fire…yet.

He unsheathes his katana and faces Izuna.

Dancing is familiar to Madara.

Other clans and civilians can whisper all they like that the Uchiha are warmongers but that’s because they’re all _blind_. The Uchiha are good at killing and fighting, but they’d always prefer dancing.

Madara races forward and his katana meets Izuna’s with a scrape and screech of metal. His brother twists and steps back. Madara whirls and their swords meet and break apart in a flurry of blows.

“Watch your feet, Madara!” Tajima yells as Izuna goes on the offensive.

“Yeah, Aniki, watch your feet,” Izuna snickers as he pushes Madara back. Izuna is a prodigy in kenjutsu. All of the adults whisper that he’s going to surpass Tajima’s skill with the katana, a legendary feat.

But Madara is a prodigy, too.

And he’s older.

He steps back, disengaging so suddenly that Izuna stumbles when his blade meets no resistance. Madara grabs Izuna’s collar and kicks out his ankles. Madara knows it wouldn’t work against an enemy shinobi, he’s too small and the move leaves him too open and unbalanced.

But this is dancing and the look on the little weasel’s face as he scrabbles at Madara’s arm, trying instinctively to hold himself up instead of falling butt-first into the dirt is worth it.

“Watch your feet, _otouto,”_ Madara cackles and braces his feet as Izuna tries to drag him down.

“Boys,” Tajima calls after a few moments more and Madara hauls Izuna up from his awkward position.

Naori and Hikaku return with their own weapons in hand and Father starts the actual lesson.

They go for an hour until Tajima calls for a stop and sends Hikaku and Naori to spar against Izuna.

“Father?” Madara asks as Tajima pulls him away and starts for the weapons shed.

“Izuna will inherit my katana,” Father starts and while Madara is confused about the sudden topic, he’s not surprised by it.

“I know, Father.”

“I am…concerned for him, Madara. His affinity…” Tajima trails off and Madara looks at the ground and the few remaining grassy patches. They set up the compound only a week ago and already the well-used paths are going bare.

“Me too…” Madara finally whispers when it becomes apparent Father wants him to say something. Maybe if his other brothers had lived it would be different, maybe they would have inherited an odd affinity too but now…

Madara was praised for his fire style. Everyone looked at him and they saw Mother and how she embodied their element. There was a joke that Madara took all of her fire and burned so brightly that there was none left for his younger brother.

Izuna had a lightning affinity and no raiton teacher.

It was a problem but it shouldn’t be. Madara could see it now, if Izuna mastered his raiton and used it against those Hyuuga or Senju bastards…they would never expect it!

But an affinity was only useful if he had a teacher.

If he had jutsu to use.

The Uchiha had no raiton teachers.

And no ninja, clanless or not, would willingly teach them. Father had already commanded the clan to be on the lookout for new raiton hand signs and had already had others show Izuna previous ones they had recorded with their sharingan, but it did nothing to solve the _teaching_ problem.

Izuna would be at a disadvantage with his affinity.

But he was a prodigy with the katana.

It was better to be known as a kenjutsu prodigy and take Father’s sword rather than a ninjutsu failure, forever in Madara’s shadow.

Still, _technically_ , Father’s sword should be his by birthright. And it is an impressive weapon, a wedding gift from his grandfather to his grandmother, a family heirloom from Grandfather’s samurai days.

While Madara is lost in his thoughts, Tajima stops and turns towards him, ruffling his hair.

“You are a good son, Madara,” Tajima praises and Madara feels heat spill across his cheeks. “Izuna will inherit my katana, but I still have something for you.” Father brushes the reed curtain aside and heads for a wrapped bundle with the clan head’s seal emblazoned on its wrapping.

He hands it to Madara who carefully pulls apart the twine, to reveal a large, gleaming kama.

The scythe winks up at him and Madara feels his breath catch.

“You should still practice with other weapons, you never know what will be available to you if you’re disarmed in battle,” Father says and Madara nods mechanically. The kama is _beautiful._ Beautiful in a way only weapons can be and can only be appreciated properly by the Uchiha who care for them. “…and you’re not even listening,” Father continues and Madara nods, one hand reaching out to trail along the edge. It cuts cleanly through his finger and he feels a bit in love.

Now if only one of the ancient gunbai had survived…

“Let’s go, Madara,” it’s only when Father ruffles his hair again that Madara snaps back to attention, “I’ll teach you the basic katas.”

He grins and races out, the kama raised high above his head.

Izuna, Hikaku, and Naori all pale and dart away from him with high pitched shrieks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, watching Shippuden and realizing how much Madara, especially EdoTensei!Madara, references dancing while fighting: guy must like dancing.
> 
> My dumbass brain: But like, what if that's *literally* what the Uchiha called sparring? Because he's toying with them and doesn't really take the early "introductory" fights seriously? He's not fighting, he's sparring, he's *dancing*
> 
> Me:...that makes no sense and it completely falls apart--
> 
> My dumbass brain: Don't care, it's fic canon, now. 
> 
> Me, realizing the comedy when Hashirama and Madara meet. "You want to dance?" "Uh, sure? I think I remember this one from the Daimyo's court...and why are you drawing a weapon?" "You said we were dancing!" *cue running and screaming, with a sprinkle of mad cackling thrown in*
> 
> Me: Brilliant. It's done.
> 
> So yes, the Uchiha 100%, completely straight-faced call sparring "dancing" and they (Madara) get really testy when other people (Hashirama) poke fun at this. 
> 
> Also! Fun bird fact! In raptor species, males are usually considerably smaller than their female counterparts. They're built for speed and hunting while females are bigger to sit on larger clutches of eggs. The Uchiha aren't based on one specific bird, but the major influences are kites (one of the earliest depictions of tengu, also a raptor), crows, and peregrine falcons (raptors) but I thought it'd be cool to have slightly more subtle changes alongside the literal feathers and talons. So, most Uchiha men are smaller and compact, built more for speed than their larger/taller female counterparts. Of course, individual body shapes vary and there are tall/muscular men and short/compact women. 
> 
> I have the next two chapters written, so expect chapter 3 next Sunday, June 7th! It'll be time to meet our favorite fashion-disaster ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> *Originally Chapter 1's endnote but AO3 is being weird so here it is:
> 
> Note: Kou's story is a creation myth. *Something* happened to give the Uchiha their absurdly strong fire affinity and tengu characteristics but Ai existed a couple of generations after Indra and is categorized as an "ancient ancestor" so the story has been passed down orally for generations and generations and has changed accordingly. Also important, this is the Uchiha version, the other clans have their own versions of how they got the Uchiha got their powers/looks and...well...those stories aren't nearly as kind. Look at me, using my anthropology degree for fanfiction, lol. 
> 
> There is no set update schedule for this fic as my BNHA fic is my main priority, however I will try to do at least once a month! (Two chapters are already written so I'll post those soon.) I already have nine pages of plot and outline typed out, I just need the time to sit down and write. So while this may be slow to update, there will be updates because this ship has taken over my life and I know exactly how the fic is going to go. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


	3. The Boy by the River: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first saw kid Madara my first thought was...this poor child got gum stuck in his hair and had to cut it out. 
> 
> And since this is my fic...yeee. 
> 
> #ItsIzunasFault

Madara loves his clan.

This, after all, is the most important rule of being an Uchiha.

That doesn’t mean he can stay cooped up in the compound day after day though without wanting to wring several necks, Izuna’s included. _Especially_ Izuna’s after his last prank cost Madara five inches of hair.

“I’m going hunting,” Madara tells his father one day after the elders and respected fighters leave the Big Yurt. He already has his hunting gear strapped to his waist and back.

“Our scouts haven’t finished updating their maps so be alert,” Tajima says, looking up from the papers scattered across his table that sits at the far back of the building.

“Of course, Father.”

Madara nods to his clansmen who mill about the compound as he heads to the edge. A short, ten-minute walk extends to almost half an hour as everyone stops to speak to him. His older cousins stop to congratulate him on his flicker performance last night and ask after his brother and father. Cousins closer to his age try and rope him into dancing or helping them set up the final yurts of the compound.

He finally extracts himself from one of his older, pregnant cousins, Yoriko, who insists he come back to her yurt because his hair is an absolute _mess_ and needs to be fixed immediately _, that’s exactly why he’s trying to leave before he starts spitting sparks, stupid Izuna and his stupid pranks and the stupid weird sap that refused to come out of Madara’s hair,_ when yet another cousin runs up to him.

“Madara-sama! Madara-sama! Look, I just lost my first tooth!” Takeshi bounds up to him, blood-soaked prize clutched in his outstretched fingers. His chin is bloody, a gaping hole where a bottom tooth should be.

“How’d you get a black eye and a broken nose by losing a tooth?” Madara asks, openly staring at the boy’s twisted nose. Takeshi blinks in surprise and reaches up to poke his nose with the hand that doesn’t have his bloody prize. He winces, tears welling up on reflex.

“Oh, that’s pretty simple. Kimi.”

That _did_ explain things. 

Kimi was only four summers but she was _terrifying._ She already had an absurd amount of chakra control and was all too fond of throwing around a super-strength that children should _not_ be allowed to have. He’d heard a few of his older cousins whispering that she might be a medic-nin but Madara doubted it. Chakra control she might have but Kimi was…not a healer.

He _almost_ feels bad for their enemies, _almost._

Between Naori’s deadly precision and fondness for taijutsu enhanced by the thick black talons on her hands and Kimi’s absurd ability to punch something until it just stops moving the girls were deadly. Kimi and Naori were going to be good friends and the knowledge makes Madara shudder.

“Accident during dancing?” Madara asks but since this is _Takeshi,_ he has a feeling he already knows how it happened.

“Yeah,” Takeshi sighs dreamily and Madara barely stops himself from rolling his eyes, “I saw Ichiro walk by and he has those new bone pins, you know? I was struck dumb by his beauty.”

_And then Kimi struck you so hard you got a black eye, a broken nose, and a missing tooth._

“You’re _six,_ Takeshi,” Madara can’t help but point out, despite the argument never working before.

“Almost seven! And he’s _beautiful_ , Madara-sama, you just don’t understand.”

Madara remembers both Ichiro and Takeshi spitting up on him when he himself was six and in charge of watching them and Izuna, since they were age-mates. He had to _burn_ that yukata; he couldn’t get the smell out of it.

“I’ll…take your word for it, cousin,” he finally settles and Takeshi stumbles away with a besotted look on his face, tooth and various injuries completely forgotten.

Madara hurries past but he hasn’t walked another two minutes before a small child bowls him over and he ends up flat on his back as she hugs his waist and cries.

_And there’s Kimi._

“M-Madara-sama! I-I’m terrible!” She shrieks and Madara wriggles until she lets him sit up. He barely has time to take a breath before Kimi is burrowing her face in his neck and shrieking right next to his ear.

“There, there,” he pats her on the back and tries to ignore the ringing in his ear. “Is this about Takeshi?”

“Y-yes. Am I going to be banished?” She pulls back and Madara winces at the snot and tears smeared all over her face. It’s on his yukata now. _As soon as I get out, I’ll have to find a river to wash it out._ He’s not going back to change now, if he did, he’d never be able to leave.

“Why would you be banished, Kimi?” He asks as he picks her up and stands. She’s still small enough that he can do it without trouble.

“I broke his face,” she mutters, resting her teary and snotty face on the clean side of his neck, “you’re not supposed to _actually_ hurt people when you dance.”

“You’re not supposed to try and _kill_ people,” Madara corrects her as he starts towards Takeshi and Kimi’s yurt. Hopefully, their father is home and he can take her. “Accidents and injuries happen all the time. Besides, it was Takeshi’s fault for getting distracted in the first place.”

Madara doesn’t know what would be worse, if he got over his infatuation for Ichiro or acted on it. He tries not to imagine either.

“S-so I’m not going to be banished and left out in the cold to die like a Senju dog?” She sniffles and this time Madara can’t help his exasperated sigh. _Thanks, Elder Kisho_. He’s been so busy training and helping set up their compound he hasn’t had time to listen to Elder Kisho’s ramblings in a while. Besides, most Senju have earth affinities it’d make more sense if they were some kind of dirt or worm. Plus, calling the Senju dogs was an insult to the Inuzuka…

“No, you’re not going to be banished and left out in the cold to die like a Senju dog,” Madara reassures her and gives a silent thanks to the gods when he sees Kimi’s father standing outside their yurt, looking around for her.

“Tomoya-san,” Madara walks up to him and pries Kimi from his neck to hold her out like a misbehaved summons. And, just like a misbehaved summons, she wriggles around, arms flapping like wings as a sound somewhere between a shriek and a growl comes from her throat.

“Ah, Kimi there you are. Thank you for bringing her back, Madara-sama,” Tomoya smiles and then, because he’s truly one of their best, plucks Kimi from Madara’s outstretched and holds her tight to his chest. Madara tries not to let his disgust show, he can _feel_ the snot on his neck now, but judging from Tomoya’s amused expression, he’s failed. “Do you want to come in—”

“My apologies, Tomoya-san, but I was on my way out. I’m going hunting.”

He will _not_ be dragged into something else. He’s ready to tear his hair and feathers out for some peace and quiet!

“Of course, Madara-sama. Don’t let us stop you,” and that is _definitely_ an amused sparkle in Tomoya’s black eyes. Madara puffs himself up, holding his chin high as he spins on his heel, Kimi’s snot and tears still on his neck and yukata, and marches away.

He ignores Tomoya’s laughter behind him.

Madara finally manages to make it to the edge of the compound and he would deny until his dying day that he purposefully snuck between yurts to avoid any more cousins who wanted to stop and talk to him.

There is no wall to the edge of the Uchiha compound. Instead the dancing rings and then the guard towers face towards the forest around them, with careful traps of ninja wire and explosive tags hidden between the trees. Crow summons line the branches above them, eyes trained outward. Madara nods at one of the birds perched above and its black eyes flicker red before turning back.

Once he’s outside of the compound, Madara heads straight towards a river he saw marked on his father’s map. He might explore the area a bit afterward and of course he would actually bring game home. “Going hunting” as an individual rather than a party might be a euphemism for getting out before someone loses their mind and the infamous Uchiha tempers spark, but he’d still bring something back. There’s an entire clan to feed, after all.

_This is pretty far out._ Madara thinks as the trees thin and he can see a gleam of water through the leaves.

Madara jumps down from the branches of the tree and strolls out to the open bank. There is no dirt or sand on the riverbank instead, it’s full of palm-sized smooth rocks.

Madara closes his eyes and starts to mold chakra, he reaches out but senses no other signatures near him. Satisfied, he strips off his hunting pack and yukata, wincing as the now crusted snot pulls at his skin.

He crouches next to the river and dunks the collar in, scrubbing as best he can to get the snot out before it stains. He’s not burning this one! It’s an old yukata, one of Father’s when he was just a little older than Madara now.

_“Always just a little big, so you’ll have room to grow into it,”_ Father had said, ruffling his hair. It was a true sentiment, but also practical. They didn’t have the room to haul entire wardrobes across the world, the longer anyone could wear their clothes the less they had to buy new ones. Izuna had a lot of Father’s hand-me-downs and some of Great-Uncle’s before he died.

Madara splashed water on his neck and tied his damp yukata back on. It would dry out soon, being so close to his warm skin. Madara stood, ready to retreat back to the trees and spend time tracking down game when the smooth rocks caught his eye.

On a sudden impulse he picked one up and tossed it up and down in his hands. Carelessly he tossed it into the water and startled when it skipped once before sinking.

_Well…hunting usually takes several hours._ Madara thinks as he picks up another stone and this time actually tries to skip it. It skips three times before sinking.

He picks up another one and holds it like he would a shuriken. It skips four times, so _close_ to the opposite side before it sinks.

He tries again…four skips.

Again, four skips.

Again, four skips.

_Alright, you stupid rock,_ Madara tosses it up and down, reigning in the part of him that wanted to shriek and start a fire hot enough on this stupid river bank to melt everything in sight.

“This time, I’m gonna make it to the other side.”

But before he can throw the rock, another goes shooting past, skipping five times until it clatters against the opposite bank. Madara turns slowly, pushing down the panic bubbling up within him. He didn’t sense anyone, why didn’t he sense anyone?

Another boy with the most _ridiculously,_ stupid haircut is grinning behind him. Madara can’t take his eyes off it, dark but not Uchiha blue-black, falling into awkward clumps around his head. It looks like someone stuck a bowl on his head and cut around it. He’s so transfixed he almost misses the other boy’s words.

“Just aim a little higher than you’d expect. That’s the trick.”

_Is he…lecturing me?_ Him? Uchiha Madara. Heir to the Uchiha Clan. Firstborn of Tajima, the Iron Heart, and Kou, the Phoenix Queen. _Soon-to-be_ wielder of the sharingan, and the brightest master of the katon since Ai.

And this…weird boy and his weird hair and his weird clothing is lecturing _him?!_

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Madara does not _pout_. “I can make it to the other side on my own!” He sniffs and turns away before realizing the weird boy is still standing there. “Who are you anyway? What are you doing here?”

“I’m your stone-skipping rival,” he grins, eyes forcibly shut from how large his smile is.

_Great, he’s an idiot._

“But my stone has already made it across, so maybe I’m your stone-skipping _better_ ,” his grin stays firmly locked in place.

_That makes no sense._ Madara fumes, a sudden inexplicable urge to wipe that smug grin off the other boy’s face rising within him.

“I _asked,_ who are you?” He snaps, hands curling to fists by his sides.

“I’m Hashirama, but I can’t tell you my last name.”

Madara’s ire cools and an uncomfortable ball of ice forms in his chest. He was so startled by the boy’s…Hashirama’s… _weirdness_ that he forgot how he got here. Madara is a gifted sensor, not perfect _,_ but still good. He didn’t sense Hashirama’s chakra which either means he’s a civilian or a shinobi trying to hide it.

_And he won’t say his last name…_

That was shinobi law.

True, some civilians followed shinobi laws, especially if they were allied to a specific clan but they didn’t usually just _announce_ the law. They lied and gave a false name. It was a real problem when going into civilian villages to trade because none allied themselves with the Uchiha. The only shinobi clans they allied with or even had _neutral_ relations in this country were the Hagamoro, Neurno, and Inuzuka. 

_He’s an enemy._ Madara thinks and clutches the stone in his hand. He should kill him now. Hashirama isn’t expecting it, he’s practically announced himself as an enemy declaring that he won’t tell Madara his last name.

_He’s an idiot._ He either hasn’t recognized Madara, or the feathers in his hair, or doesn’t know enough to put two and two together.

Still, on the off chance he _does_ recognize Madara as an Uchiha but doesn’t know _which_ Uchiha he is…it’s still the first time Madara’s not been attacked immediately on sight. And for that stupid, _stupid_ reason he shifts and turns his back on Hashirama.

“Just watch, I’m going to make it this time,” he winds up to throw the stone, expecting an attack at any time. He wants, oddly enough, Hashirama to be the one to break this make-believe world where strange boys walk up and announce they won’t tell you their last name and act like that doesn’t _immediately_ mark them as a combatant.

Madara’s prepared, one hand slipping towards a kunai as he throws the stone.

The stone sinks, but the attack from behind never comes.

_He…didn’t attack?_

Madara whirls around, eyes narrowed.

_What game is he playing at?_

“I didn’t make it because you’re standing behind me! Who just stands behind other people just to distract them?! I hate it when people do that! I can’t even pee with someone behind me!” Were he in a better mindset Madara would probably sink to the ground in shame that such stupid words came from the heir of the Uchiha clan. If Izuna heard, he’d never let Madara forget it and hold it over his head until his dying day.

But Hashirama doesn’t laugh at him instead, he sinks to the ground, looking positively depressed.

“S-sorry.” And the apology sounds…real.

“…it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Madara…doesn’t know what to do.

His enemy isn’t attacking him.

His enemy is curled on the ground, apologizing.

“Sorry, Hashirama, I was just making excuses.”

“I…I didn’t know,” Hashirama sniffles and Madara sees _tears_ reflected in his eyes, “that you had such a debilitating condition.” He says it with a straight face, eyes still wide and brimming with tears.

“HEY!”

His enemy is an idiot!

Hashirama pops up from the ground, depressive state gone and back to smiling wide.

“One thing’s for sure, I’m a better stone skipper than you,” he says, the picture of air-headed stupidity.

“I’ll skip you instead, you stupid idiot!” Madara yells and nearly lunges at him.

Hashirama falls back to the ground, knees curled against his chest as he pouts.

“S-sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. To make amends, I’ll let you throw me in the river. Go ahead…I just hope I reach the opposite shore,” and this time Madara doesn’t miss the glint in his eye or the sharp curl of his smile.

“Oh, I’ll throw you into that river, Hashirama!”

And maybe in another world, he would have just loomed threateningly above the boy until a body floated down the river and caught their eyes, tearing them apart just a bit too soon.

But in this world, fire itself burned through Madara’s veins and his impulse control was… _sorely_ lacking.

“Your face is so red, you look like a tomato!” Hashirama laughs and Madara’s thin thread of control snaps. He shrieks and lunges at the other boy. Hashirama’s eyes widen and he scuttles back, still laughing in short gasps.

They go tumbling to the ground, wrestling and rolling on hard rocks that quickly even out into grass and dirt. Hashirama is stronger than Madara. It’s not surprising, Madara is built for speed and force but it’s still _irritating_ that the other boy can break free of his hold and draw him deeper into the woods.

After an odd amount of time, it feels like years have been drawn out in the space of only a few seconds, Madara emerges victorious. He lowered himself to Izuna’s level of tickling and pinching to exhaust an opponent, something he will _never_ admit to, but the tactics have allowed him to perch victorious on the small of Hashirama’s back as the other boy is splayed out in the dirt, groaning.

It’s only now, panting hard and grinning at the sweet sensation of _winning,_ that he realizes once again he’s done something incredibly stupid. He wrestled an unknown, _enemy_ ninja around in the dirt like he would an Uchiha.

He hadn’t even tried to injure Hashirama!

…but Hashirama hadn’t tried to injure him either.

_Is it a trap?_ Lure him away with a false sense of security, back into the forests away from the river?

But Hashirama is laid out underneath him, moaning from laughter as he fights for his breath. The other boy’s chakra is…weird, too much like the background readings of the plants and earth around them. It’s nothing at all like the comforting _heat-metal-smoke-sky-fire_ of most Uchiha chakra. Madara’s never sensed anything like it, and even now with Hashirama underneath him, he can’t sense any other signatures besides theirs, new strange chakra or not.

“You know, you’re really stupid to let an enemy nin wrestle you to the ground,” Madara says, unable to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. Hashirama stiffens underneath him before groaning.

“Ah, so I guess you know?”

“Of course I know, idiot! Who else just announces shinobi law out of the blue like that?” Madara huffs, shifting his weight until his tailbone digs into Hashirama’s spine.

“Well, _you_ throw skipping stones like they’re shuriken,” Hashirama pouts, a cloud of despair hanging over him.

“Shut up! I was still getting the hang of it!”

“Whatever you say…uh, what _is_ your name?”

Madara feels his eye twitch.

“I’m not telling you,” he crosses his arms and sniffs.

“What! Come on, _please?_ ”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pleeeeease?”

“No!”

“Fine. How about a gamble? If I win, you tell me your name. If you win….uh, I’ll run around naked and shout _one_ thing for five minutes.”

While Madara is slightly confused, that sounds awfully specific and practiced, it _is_ pretty funny to imagine. He obviously can’t get him to yell how great the Uchiha are, but he _could_ make Hashirama yell how great Madara is and then by extension his clan.

“Hn. What’s the gamble going to be? You’ve already eaten dirt,” he leers, craning his neck to stare at Hashirama’s face. But where he expected a pout, that same sharp smile is on the other boy’s face.

“No I haven’t, but I accept. If I eat dirt, you’ll tell me your name.”

“Wait, what—”

But Hashirama is already _licking_ the ground.

Just…licking it. It’s not like Madara himself hasn’t gotten a mouth full of dirt and dust during dancing and fighting but he’s never voluntarily licked the ground and then had the gall to stick his dirt-covered tongue out at someone else.

_Who even…what kind of idiot…_ This time his eye doesn’t twitch, it _spasms._

“Hah! I won, now tell me your name.” Hashirama says with more pride than any literal dirt-licker ought to have.

“That’s not how gambling works, idiot!” Madara whacks him on the back of his head. “We didn’t set terms and I most assuredly didn’t agree to you _licking dirt_!”

“So what I’m hearing is you’re a man who doesn’t honor his word.”

“WHAT?!”

“Shame. I thought my stone skipping rival had more integrity than this,” Hashirama sniffs and Madara is seconds away from tearing out his hair and feathers. The whole purpose of this hunting trip has been ruined. Though at least if he snaps and burns something, the only casualty will be Hashirama and his stupid hair and his stupid clothes.

“I. Have. Integrity.”

“So then tell me your name.”

“It’s Madara,” he barely manages to bite the _Uchiha_ back, “are you happy now?!”

“Yep!” Hashirama grins and surges upward, resulting in round two of wrestling in the dirt. This time Madara has no shame in employing all of Izuna’s backhanded younger-sibling tactics. He’s back to sitting on Hashirama in minutes and he makes sure to dig his tailbone in until he _knows_ it’ll bruise.

“You’re so mean to me, Madara-chan,” Hashirama moans, face-first in the dirt.

“ _What_ did you call me?”

“Madara-chan,” Hashirama says with a wide smile.

“Hashirama,” Madara is proud of how his voice is devoid of the _burning rage_ he feels bubbling up within, “I’m going to gut you and then throw you into the river.”

But the other boy just snickers.

The sharingan is awakened with a sudden onslaught of strong grief in regard to the clan, to family. While it would be nigh heretical to form one for an _outsider_ Madara wouldn’t be surprised if the red overlay of everything he sees is from the first rage-formed sharingan, Hashirama is so annoying. His chakra is burning and raging in his sternum, spreading up his throat, even the simplest hand sign will have him spitting fully formed fireballs at this point.

“You’re clearly a younger brother, between the uh, _pinching,_ and oversized yukatas so Madara-chan it is.”

“I’m the eldest!” Madara shrieks.

“Really? Me too!” Hashirama surges up _again_ , but it’s less wrestling this time and more him holding Madara’s wrists to prevent him from strangling Hashirama. “How many siblings do you have? I have three younger brothers.”

“…one brother.” It used to be four. It _should_ have been four.

Hashirama notices the pause but doesn’t comment on it. His brown eyes go soft and there’s _pity_ but not _understanding_ and Madara chafes.

“Why were you at the river?” He asks, desperate for a topic change. Hashirama is dumb enough that he just _might_ mention if he’d been sent to scout out the area for enemy clans.

“’Cause I like looking at the water and skipping stones! How about you? I’ve never seen you there before.” They’ve come to an awkward stand-still, both kneeling on the ground, Madara’s wrists in Hashirama’s grip and faces bent close together.

Too close.

Madara scrunches his nose and leans back as Hashirama bumps his cheek with his own.

“I had to wash a four-year old’s snot from my yukata,” he mutters, face burning. Hashirama lets go of his wrists to bend over and laugh. Madara growls and he shoves the other boy over without hesitation. “But now I have things to do, so scram!”

He stands and Hashirama scrambles up after him.

“What are you going to do?”

“Hunting.” He’s wasted too much time already and he wants to go over his katas for the kama again before dinner.

“Hunting? Ooh, can I come?”

“Hn.”

“That’s not a no, so I’m taking it as a yes.” Hashirama grins. 

“It’s not a yes! Don’t just invite yourself onto other people’s hunting trips,” Madara splutters. Honestly, there’s no real reason for Hashirama _not_ to come besides the general _enemy nin_ issue. Madara is pretty convinced this isn’t an elaborate trap. It would have been sprung when he’d been distracted while wrestling on the ground, not when Madara is preparing himself to hunt. Plus if he _did_ bring Hashirama along it’d give him a chance to show off his skills…not that he _wants_ to show off for Hashirama but his dignity has taken too many blows today.

Madara is a deadly shinobi, he deserves a modicum of respect and fear!

“Pleaaaaase, Madara…” Hashirama didn’t add the _inappropriate_ ‘chan’ but Madara could see the gleam in his brown eyes, he might have well said it out loud.

“Fine! But you better not distract me and if I think you’re doing any fishy—”

“—you’ll gut me and throw me into the river?” Hashirama asks with a grin.

“I will!” Madara huffs and spins around. “You’d better keep up!” He snaps and jumps up to the branches of a tree, balancing on his geta with ease. Hashirama follows without issue and Madara can grumble and admit that the other boy’s chakra control is good.

Now to see if he’s a good hunter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hashbrown appears! I love these idiots and their chemistry so much. Madara is...so damn easy to rile up. I tried to preserve as much canon dialogue because...it's golden. Like, pure gold. And then show how this timeline diverts even further.
> 
> Also! It's a little weird how two clan heirs didn't recognize one another? Or at least react to the other's name? Because Tobirama and Izuna knew who the other was but like...Hashirama and Madara don't know the name of the clan heir of your most hated/rival clan? It was bothering me so I came up with reasons why that will appear later!
> 
> Next chapter is the last pre-written one and will be up next Sunday on June 14th. More bonding time!
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! It means a lot to me! <3
> 
> Edit 6/16 I drew some art :3  
> I'll be posting more on Tumblr so find me here: https://mira--mira.tumblr.com/


	4. The Boy by the River: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to me! New chapter for all of you! :D
> 
> I had this chapter all written up and I decided to post it early since today is indeed my birthday. I also updated the tags for this fic, they might change a bit more, just FYI. Madara is still his prickly self here but, because I love fluff and oblivious cuteness between these two, it'll start to transition into tooth-rotting sweetness pretty fast in future chapters, tbh. 
> 
> Like usual I don't own Naruto and characters. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include animal death (they are hunting) and descriptions of starvation. Neither are extremely explicit but please take care of yourselves!
> 
> Enjoy!

It soon becomes very clear that Hashirama has _no idea_ how to hunt.

His steps are quick and silent on the branches, but he won’t _shut up._

“So are you going to use a cool jutsu? Or are we setting traps? Maybe going to a settlement to trade?” Hashirama blabbers and Madara grits his teeth as he feels heat spread from his sternum to his throat and face. He’s too close to spitting katons again.

_How can one person be so annoying?! None of those are even hunting!_

“Aw, Madara-chan you’re blushing!” Hashirama snickers and Madara allows himself a moment to imagine how much _better_ Hashirama’s hair would look if a fireball jutsu burned half of it off.

“I’m not blushing! You’re just infuriating and stupid and have no idea how to hunt!”

Hashirama’s lower lip starts to wobble.

“Stop that!” Madara pauses on a branch to glare at him. The wobbling worsens and Madara groans, dragging his hands down his cheeks. The talons prick but don’t draw blood, he cut the tips recently and he’s still young enough they haven’t hardened completely. Learning a new weapon was hard enough without all the additional nicks.

“ _Look._ We’re _hunting_ , not trading, or trapping, or using _jutsu_ ,” he honestly doesn’t know if Hashirama is so stupid that he’d think Madara would admit to specialized techniques on a hunting trip or his stupid clan actually uses jutsus to hunt. “Right now I’m _trying_ to track but if you don’t shut up you’re going to scare all the animals away.”

Hashirama pouts but he’s mercifully quiet…for now.

Madara finally catches a fresh trail. He slows, changing direction and Hashirama follows.

“Why’d you change directions?” He asks when Madara finally pauses, at least this time his voice is quiet _._

“Rabbit warren.”

“Huh? Where?”

“Right there.” Madara jabs a finger towards a visible hole, half-covered by a fallen sapling and grass.

“I don’t see it, are you sure?”

 _Why_ did he bring Hashirama along again? Madara wants to yell but bites his tongue.

“ _Yes_ , considering I’ve been following their trail for the last ten minutes.”

“What trail?”

Madara’s going to kill him. He’s going to gut this idiot and throw him into the river and never talk to a stranger ever again. Madara opens his mouth to yell, rabbits be damned he’ll find another warren, but stops at the honest confusion on Hashirama’s face.

“Did you not see the droppings and territory markings on the trees?” He asks but then immediately knows the answer. Hashirama wanted to use a _jutsu_ to hunt, of course, he didn’t see them.

“Uh, no.”

“The disturbed earth and chewed up grass?”

“Nooo.”

 _He’s incompetent,_ is Madara’s first thought, followed closely by unwelcome concern. Hashirama looks his age, he should be able to hunt. If he can’t hunt what about the rest of his clan? If they can’t hunt, how do they eat? Are they starving?

The Uchiha have always been shadowed by hunger.

The slow weakening of muscles and bodies, the bones pushing up to split skin, the constant _ache_ that radiates with every breath until the hunger sucks away the soul and kills the body.

Death by starvation is something one only wishes on their worst enemies.

But Hashirama doesn’t show any of the signs. His cheeks aren’t sunken and hollowed, his skin isn’t suctioned to his wrists, barely more than bone wrapped in skin, his clothes, despite their weird design, fit him properly and don’t slip from boney shoulder or wrap tightly over an extended stomach. He looks…healthy.

 _He might not be a traveler._ Some clans stayed in the same compound for _years_. The Uchiha traveled seasonally as did the Inuzuka but he knew some worked the land. The Hatake and Akimichi were rumored to only move every decade or so to find new farmland.

“Well you need to get better,” Madara finally says, turning back to the warren.

“You saw all that stuff? Your eyes must be crazy good,” Hashirama mutters.

Are his…not? Madara doesn’t have the sharingan… _yet._ He doesn’t have it yet, he _will_ get it…eventually. But even he could see the obvious signs, you don’t need a sharingan for that.

“Your eyes are just bad,” Madara says instead and smirks when Hashirama deflates. “Now sit back and watch.”

Madara draws three kunai and puffs up when Hashirama stills next to him. Maybe not a _complete_ idiot after all. He marks the likely exits apart from the main hole and breathes in.

One kunai sails towards the sapling that rests across the burrow’s hole. As it strikes true, Madara lets out the flushing call, a sudden echoing high-pitched shriek that, when paired with the vibrations from the kunai, drives the rabbits from the den.

It all goes according to plan, at least until Hashirama jostles his shoulder while nearly falling out of the tree. Madara looses two kunai but their aim is off and only one strikes clean. The rest of the rabbits scatter and Madara turns to glare at Hashirama.

“W-w-what was _that_?” He whispers, pale-faced and wide-eyed, clinging to the tree branch.

“What are you talking about? Come on, I need to get the rabbits,” Madara jumps down from the branch and after a second Hashirama follows, albeit a bit wobbly.

“Seriously though, what was that sound? I think I lost part of my soul.”

“The flushing call? You’re scared of the flushing call that’s used to scare rabbits?” Madara snickers and unrolls the game sack attached to his waist. The sack will be used for small game and the large stretched leather skin can be looped over his shoulders to carry big game.

“It was one of the most nerve-wracking, terror-inducing things I’ve ever heard in my entire life…teach me how to do it? Please?” Hashirama clasps his hands together and leans into Madara’s space. He pushes the other boy back and grumbles as he wipes the blood off the kunai and puts the rabbit in the bag.

There’s no rule against it. A flushing call is just that, it’s not a clan secret. Maybe the calls differ a bit by clan, Madara’s pretty sure the Inuzuka do some kind of howl or yip and once when the Uchiha were on the border of Lightning Country he’d heard civilian hunters use whistles.

And if Hashirama really can’t hunt…

Madara shouldn’t.

Hashirama is an enemy. A stupidly friendly one, but an enemy nonetheless. _He’s the kind of enemy that falls first in battle._ Madara’s eyes slide over to the other boy, he’s still begging, crocodile tears in his eyes.

Madara shouldn’t, not even something as basic as a flushing call.

But Hashirama has been…friendly. Also annoying, the kind of annoying that steals Madara’s words away and leaves him with nothing but shouting and shrieking…but still friendly. He still can’t believe Hashirama hasn’t even _tried_ to kill him.

And the images of the starving still paint themselves on the back of his eyelids. He blinks and sees Kaito’s shrunken form. Three springs ago they’d lost Yuuto and Reo to a Senju ambush. It hadn’t been a battle, just a small food gathering group. And that winter…

Hunger invited sickness. Even if the soul could be guarded and the body pulled from its atrophying state, sickness would always be there to drag it back. In such a weakened state not even their internal fire could save them.

Yuuto and Reo wore Madara and Izuna’s old mantles. Their first ‘battle’ had been their last.

Kaito didn’t even have a mantle.

“Fine. I’ll teach you,” the words have barely left his mouth before Hashirama is clinging onto his arm. Madara sputters and tries to shove him off but he refuses to let go.

He grumbles and practically drags the other boy to the second rabbit. It’s still alive, choking on its own blood from the kunai buried in its lungs. Madara frowns and slits the rabbit’s throat. He keeps his hand on its body until its heart stops and then dips a finger in its blood. He wipes the blood over his right brow and then holds a squawking Hashirama still in order to mark him in the same way.

“What was that for?” He reaches up to touch the fresh blood and Madara swats his hand away.

“I’ll teach you the flushing call and how to hunt but you have to do it my way,” Madara pins him with a glare and is pleased when Hashirama freezes up. “When you fumbled at my flushing call my kunai was off and the kill wasn’t clean. The rabbit didn’t die instantly, it suffered. It was both of our faults so we have to pay the blood price.”

“Why?”

Madara squints at him but it sounds like a sincere question. This he probably shouldn’t be going into detail about. It was distinctly more _Uchiha_ than a flushing call, but it was important.

“It was a rabbit. It’s going to be eaten, by you, by me, by a wolf or a fox. It doesn’t mean it should suffer though, it should be killed in one painless blow. Anything else is needlessly cruel.”

They’re both silent for a long, drawn-out moment before Hashirama finally speaks.

“You have a really kind heart, Madara,” he smiles and Madara feels himself flush. He turns away and puts the second rabbit in the bag.

“Tch. Come on, I want to get a deer or two before I go home. What time do you have to be back?” Madara stands and jumps back into the trees, Hashirama following close behind.

“Just before sundown. So you’ll teach me the call now?”

“After I get my deer. It’ll be good tracking practice for you anyways.” Plus once Hashirama starts calling, he’s going to be loud and drive everything around them away. And if he doesn’t, Madara will when he inevitably has to demonstrate.

“You’re really serious about the whole learning everything, huh? You sure it has nothing to do with your ah, _performance,_ at stone skipping?” Madara can hear the smirk in his voice.

“It has nothing to do with that!”

“Uh-huh.”

“It doesn’t! What’s the point of learning a flushing call if you can’t even track game? It’s just a fancy whistle then,” Madara grumbles, eyes scanning the ground and foliage as they fly past. He keeps Father’s latest map in mind, but they’re not near the western ridge or the Hagoromo compound.

After almost an hour of trying to find a trail, and trying to tune out Hashirama’s extravagant stone skipping lessons that he insists will make Madara a master, Madara finds what he’s looking for.

He stills on a branch and fights back the urge to slap his hand over Hashirama’s mouth.

“Be quiet, there’s a herd not too far from here. Now, where’s the trail?” Madara points to the ground beneath them. He then immediately has to grab the back of Hashirama’s haori before he jumps out of the tree. “ _No._ If you jump down you’ll disturb the trail and might alert the herd. Look from up here.”

“But I can’t _see_ anything,” Hashirama pouts.

“Learn to,” Madara snaps back.

 _Maybe there is a difference between our eyes._ Madara thinks as Hashirama squints and stares down below them. Or maybe Hashirama isn’t used to looking and is missing the signs right in front of his face.

“All animals leave traces, you just have to find them and make sure it’s fresh. Look at the ground, the grass is worn, we’re on a game trail. There are tracks and the deer droppings haven’t been smudged by other animals. It’s either recent or nothing has come through besides the deer,” Madara explains and points to the ground.

“I…kinda see it.”

“Now look at plants. This is a game trail but some of the grass has been recently worn down, like something was eating. Same with the taller bushes, they’re missing branches. With the tracks, it means deer come through here pretty regularly and one herd came through recently. If we look around at the trees some bark will probably be missing from their winter source of food and territorial markings…”

Madara trails off as Hashirama clasps his hands together and then slams them down on the branch they're kneeling on.

_What kind of hand sign is that?_

He’s tense, hand on the hilt of one of his kunai. Did he make a mistake? Was this all the world’s most convoluted trap? Madara is coiled tight, energy and heat burning in him as he waits for the jutsu’s effect. He felt the spike in Hashirama’s chakra, so _something_ happened.

“Oh! I can feel the…” Hashirama trails off, tan face sallow as he realizes what he’s done. His brown eyes dart to Madara who coils further, one breath from launching the kunai. “S-sorry. I forgot, I’m not trying to attack you.”

“What was the jutsu?” Madara’s voice is flat.

“Uh,” Hashirama winces and Madara draws the kunai. He doesn’t throw it, _why doesn’t he throw it,_ and Hashirama’s eyes widen. “It’s a sensory one! For the trees. I can’t sense chakra but I can sense the trees and you said the deer might have marked the trees and I was wondering if I could sense it and ‘see’ that way since I can’t see it with my eyes!”

 _He sounds sincere._ Madara hasn’t blinked or looked away from Hashirama the entire time he spoke. Hashirama shifted, obviously nervous but Madara can’t see a tell. But then…he doesn’t know Hashirama, let alone what his tells are.

“It worked.” It’s not a question but Hashirama nods furiously anyway, hands clasped in front of him. They’re twisted together, fingers interlocked to make it harder to pull out and form seals. _Idiot._ Madara wants to scream, does he not take this seriously? Madara has killed for less on the battlefield. A look away to signal the end of the standoff and his blade buried the gut of his opponent.

But Hashirama is a child, a child like him.

Madara doesn’t fight children on the battlefield.

He is the heir of the Uchiha and their enemies have _always_ known the value of killing him.

“What all did you sense? Details, specifically.”

“You were right about the territorial markings. There are some saplings that are stripped of their bark, like the deer rubbed a long strip down the trunk. At least four of the trees have squirrel nests in their trunks, two have woodpecker nests. There’s also a tree near here that has some kind of rot in its roots, probably bacterial, and—”

“Enough.”

Hashirama’s mouth snaps shut and Madara lets out a long breath. There’s a chance Hashirama was making things up as fast as he could, but Madara spotted the two woodpeckers himself. This is still the worst time to spring a trap, so it… _probably_ , was an honest mistake.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, please don’t be mad and leave…or attack me,” Hashirama adds on, almost as an afterthought and Madara feels his eye twitch.

“Don’t do it again.” He might not be able to stop the katon or kunai the second time. They aren’t dancing, this could easily turn into a death battle.

Hashirama nods, head bowed and shoulders shaking.

“I’m not going to leave,” he _is_ a little irritated though, “so stop moping. Besides, I said I’d teach you how to do the flushing call and I will.”

Hashirama perks up, tears in his eyes.

“R-really?”

“ _Yes._ Now come on, I want to get my deer.” Madara jumps away before Hashirama could hug him, and goes after the herd.

Luckily, the tracks are fresh and within minutes Madara is staring down at a good-sized herd. The past winter was mild and their numbers reflect it. Madara spots two elders. On the edge of the herd with swollen tarsals, the does move with a lingering _stiffness_ that can only be seen with a practiced eye. He throws two kunai and smiles when both meet their mark. One strike to the brain and both does drop dead.

The deer around them spook and run.

Madara waits patiently until they’re cleared out and then signals Hashirama to drop.

“How are you going to carry them back?”

“Just watch.” Madara unrolls the stretched leather skin. Together it resembles a rather large scroll with several leather ties on the inside and outside. He removes the kunai and then drags both does over to it and ties their hooves together. He arranges them as best he can to balance out the weight and then uses the straps on the leather carrier to secure them. The stretched leather is then bundled up, two larger, heavier straps that he can secure over his shoulders. Madara hauls the two deer up, letting himself adjust to the new heavy weight. They bulge out of his back, one head hanging on either side of him.

“You look…” Hashirama covers his mouth with a hand to hide his smile.

“This is the easiest way,” Madara mutters, crossing his arms. It’s terrible for long-distance travel, the weight is all screwy for that, but it keeps both of his hands free. “Come on, I’m not waiting for you to keep up.”

Madara braces himself and jumps back up into the trees. The does are certainly heavy, but this isn’t the first time he’s traveled with big game strapped to his back.

He leads Hashirama back the way they came, angling towards the river but also sneaking just a bit closer to the Uchiha compound. He’s not stupid enough to lead Hashirama back to the compound, but he’d rather not travel out of his way, especially since he has to lug his kill back home.

Madara finally stops when he lands on the branches of an ancient redwood tree. This part of the forest is old growth, the trees big enough to have thick branches that he can rest his game-pack on and still have room to move around. Madara sets the pack down and then climbs higher, waiting for Hashirama on a higher branch.

“Are we doing this in the trees too?” Hashirama asks as he pulls himself up next to Madara.

“Of course, the trees are _safe_ ,” Madara swings his legs back and forth.

“I agree, but it’s still weird that we’re doing it in the trees. What if I fall off?”

“You’re a _shinobi._ ”

“Traveling is one thing, but even _I_ don’t just hang out in the branches all day,” Hashirama grumbles and Madara rolls his eyes. He already knew other clans weren’t as great as the Uchiha but apparently other clans were just plain _weird._

“ _Anyway,_ this is how you do the flushing call. Listen closely,” Madara clears his throat and gives the flushing call. Even though he’s expecting it, Hashirama still flinches at the shriek. “The trick is to project enough volume and tighten your throat to get the right pitch. Try it.”

Hashirama nods and straightens up. He breathes in deeply and then lets out a warbling croak.

_This…this is going to take a while._

The sun starts to dip under the horizon by the time Hashirama has managed to make even a _sliver_ of progress. Madara supposes it’s not _that_ surprising, especially if he’s not used to making any kind of calls.

Hashirama never grew up with Uchiha call games after all. He hasn’t spent weeks practicing new calls to try and trick other children into investigating and then leaping out in surprise. He hasn’t sang the call songs, weaving together mimicked individual sounds and the loveliest songbird songs to perform around the campfire at night after the flicker performances end. It’s unquestioned that Takeshi and Kimi’s father Tomoya is the _best_ at songs.

Hashirama just has _no_ experience.

“I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?” He asks after the last attempt. It’s hard to gauge his progress because his voice has started to go hoarse from an overuse of calling.

“Yes.”

A cloud of depression slams into Hashirama.

“You don’t pull any punches, do you Madara-chan?”

“It’s the truth! I’m not going to lie to spare your feelings,” Madara spits and for some godsforsaken reason _that_ makes Hashirama perk up and smile. “Besides, you’re bad at it because you haven’t done it before. You’ll get it with enough practice.”

“Aw, Madara-chan you _do_ care—”

“I’m going to gut you and throw you into the river if you don’t shut up.”

But Hashirama keeps on smiling, his eyes practically shining from idiotic joy.

_What did I do in a past life to deserve this?_

“Don’t you have to leave? The sun is starting to set,” Madara says. The light around them is just starting to take on the first golden hues of sunset and he knows he’s not going to have any time to do his kama katas before dinner. Hashirama jerks, head snapping towards the west.

“I didn’t realize it was getting so late…” he fidgets on the branch, hands tightening in his pinstriped hakama. “Um…Madara,” Hashirama’s brown eyes dart to him then back down to the branch, “do you think we could meet again?”

“What?”

“I just…I had a lot of fun and you’re really cool! We could skip stones and go hunting and…” Hashirama trails off, throat working.

“Why?” He sounds sincere but why Madara specifically? It’s dangerous for them to meet, Hashirama could go stone-skipping and hunting with his friends in his own clan, same as Madara. _Well, maybe he needs to be taught how to hunt but still…_

“I…I don’t have a lot of friends. In my clan, I mean,” Hashirama admits quietly and Madara feels his brows rise. Hashirama is an overly enthusiastic happy idiot and Madara has known him for a day. He seems like the type to be constantly surrounded by friends.

 _This would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done if I agree._ It’s a perfect trap. He would give Hashirama and his clan time to prepare.

But…

But…

_But…_

Madara is curious.

He shouldn’t be, he should say no right now. But Hashirama hasn’t attacked him. Does he know Madara is an Uchiha? It seems impossible he doesn’t, the feathers, the talons, the hair, the skin, the _eyes_. All distinctive enough to the Uchiha, even without the sharingan and uchiwa.

But Madara thinks Hashirama really _is_ ignorant. True, the Uchiha haven’t been in Fire Country in more than two years but _still._ How does he not know? It makes Madara curious and that’s not something he needs to be.

And maybe, just _maybe_ it’s…nice not to have to fight. Madara will kill anyone who threatens his family, but that doesn’t mean he _wants_ to. He can admit to himself he dreams of an impossible world where he doesn’t have to fight and kill. One where his family is safe. One where no children are sent off to die over petty feuds and generations of hate.

Maybe that’s what Madara hardens himself, ready to refuse, being a shinobi is about compartmentalizing and sacrifice, after all.

But instead what comes out of his mouth is, “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

Tears well up in Hashirama’s eyes and he tackles Madara in a hug. Madara squawks and manages to balance them before Hashirama topples them off the branch.

“You idiot, are you trying to break our necks?!” He whacks Hashirama on the back but the other boy moves even closer, burying his face in Madara’s neck. He feels something _wet_ and Madara shrieks. “Get off of me! I washed snot out of this yukata once today, I’m not doing it again!” Madara tries to shove him away but Hashirama _clings_ with a disturbing amount of strength, sniffling and sobbing on his shoulder.

Finally, Hashirama pulls back and gives him a wide smile, tears and snot dripping down his face.

_Disgusting._

“M-maybe we could meet in a week? By the river?”

“Fine. But if this ends up being a trap,” Madara jabs his finger at Hashirama, “I _will_ kill you.”

Hashirama reaches out and clasps Madara’s hand in both of his, brown eyes burning.

“It won’t be. I just want to be your friend, I swear.”

And for some, unexplainable reason, Madara believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is currently a WIP, and it will be from Hashirama's perspective to introduce more of the Senju clan and explain why he didn't immediately recognize Madara as an Uchiha. I don't have a set date for when it'll be up, but it'll probably be in a few weeks because I want to finish the USJ arc in my BNHA fic first!
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! It means a lot to me! <3


	5. Kawarama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans. Please stay safe today if you decide to celebrate!
> 
> You guys remember how I promised fluff? Have some angst (with a bit of bittersweet fluff at the end). 
> 
> I know there was a *lot* to cover in the three episodes of Hashirama's flashbacks but like it always felt to me that he never got to properly mourn and feel Kawarama's death like he did Itama's? So here, have this angst. I did try to use/work in some more canon dialogue as I love angry baby Hashi. He was ready to throw down and that must be preserved. 
> 
> Chapter warnings for canonical character death and Butsuma's shitty parenting
> 
> Like always I don't own Naruto.
> 
> Enjoy!

Hashirama is floating.

He’s rushing back to the Senju compound because he’s _late_ and Father is going to be _mad,_ but right now he doesn’t care.

Madara promised to meet with him again. Hashirama has a real friend!

He was surprised to see someone else at the river. It was an unofficial border of several clans’ territories and opened up to a neutral space in the north. Still, every time Hashirama had wandered down to the bank to skip stones he’d seen no one else.

So it was quite a shock when he’d wandered from the deeper woods, practicing with his mokuton because Father wanted a _weapon,_ not food or flowers, to see a boy in a worn, oversized yukata skipping stones.

He threw them like shuriken.

Hashirama’s first thought was to kill him.

But he _hated_ that it was, so he stayed his hand in protest. Instead, he watched. The boy had a riot of spiky hair, so black it seemed blue under the sun. Hashirama could barely pick out some inconsistencies, things stuck or braided in his hair.

_Probably feathers._ The tutor liked talking about their history and cultural significance. Apparently _a lot_ of clans braided feathers in their hair. Scroll after scroll and they all started to blur together but Hashirama didn’t complain because it was _cultural significance_ rather than _ways to identify and then kill enemies._ If his father knew, the tutor would be fired and another would be sent to take his place and Hashirama liked this one.

The boy wasn’t great at stone skipping. He wasn’t bad, he got four skips and almost made it across, but just couldn’t get the last one. Hashirama watched as he grew frustrated, skipping stone after stone. He looked like he was about to steam and it was impulsiveness that made Hashirama walk forward and throw a stone of his own.

The boy turned and _wow_ he was pale, white as the moon.

_Is he a Neurno?_ If Hashirama remembered correctly they were nocturnal and braided their hair with feathers. Not an ally, technically an enemy, but not like… _Uchiha_ kind of enemy. But the crow-demons hadn’t been seen in Fire Country since the Senju drove them out years ago. 

Hashirama didn’t have a lot of expectations when he first approached Madara. He half expected the boy to try and kill him, but he wasn’t too worried. His control of the mokuton was still strenuous, but between his strength and healing, Hashirama was confident he could, at the very least, get away intact.

But then Madara turned out to be _fun._

And he was _especially_ fun to rile up.

He would bluster and yell and his entire face and throat would flush a bright, _bright_ red at the slightest teasing word.

When he tackled Hashirama to the ground, he thought he’d died and gone to the Pure Land. Here was someone his age treating him like…like a kid! Like a friend!

In hindsight, Hashirama probably shouldn’t have gotten attached like he did. Madara could have stabbed him Sage only knew how many times and there could have been enemy shinobi shadowing him. Hashirama threw every bit of caution to the wind because he was bored and lonely and thought he could handle it.

Tobirama would have called him the worst kind of naïve.

But it didn’t end badly!

He even managed to win the bet, which was a bet no matter what Madara said, and convince Madara to let him tag along hunting. Hashirama had never been hunting. That wasn’t something _appropriate_ for one of Butsuma’s sons. Hashirama had to learn and had to kill, those were the two appropriate things for him to do. Educated so he could deal with the nobles and Fire Diaymo without bringing shame to his clan and a killer to maintain that reputation and protect the clan. Hunting animals was _beneath_ him. It was something for one of the low-born members to do, Butsuma would say.

But hunting with Madara was _fun._ He was really good at it! Even if that demonic shriek he called a _flushing call_ nearly scared Hashirama to death. But then he promised to teach Hashirama and that was even better!

The rabbit blood was weird, but…kind.

Hurting animals was wrong but Hashirama never heard anyone so passionate about avoiding any unnecessary pain. Madara had looked so serious lecturing him, black eyes wide and solemn and Hashirama had felt himself melt. Madara was so _cool_.

And then they’d nearly killed one another.

_Not_ as fun.

Hashirama hadn’t thought twice before he was using mokuton which was _such_ a bad idea. But he just couldn’t see what Madara was describing and he wanted to so badly. Hashirama was bad at a lot of things but this was the first time that he couldn’t, just _couldn’t_ be bad at something! What if Madara decided teaching him wasn’t worth it? What if it was some kind of friendship thing in his clan and kids could only be friends if they hunted together?

He was so close to having a friend! A real friend!

In the end, Hashirama hadn’t been good at the flushing call, seriously _how_ did Madara make the noise? But he agreed to meet again!

Hashirama couldn’t stop smiling as he made his way back. Father is going to be mad, but when isn’t he mad? 

And that, of course, is when he reaches the compound’s gate and sees the guards’ faces.

“Hashirama-sama!” They snap to attention and his smile dims. “Your father is at the cemetery with your brothers, he requests you go immediately there.”

_The cemetery…_

A cold ball of ice settles in his chest as the last dregs of his smile slip away.

Hashirama bursts through the wooden gates and sprints through the compound, his sandals slapping against the packed earth. A solemn mood hangs over the entire Senju compound. Elders don’t scold him, adults stare at the ground as he passes, children look up at him with wet eyes, everyone bows their heads and pay respect to the Clan Heir.

He takes the quickest path to the cemetery he can, but it still takes too much time to cross the massive compound and then back outside its walls before the earthen graves start to rise around him. The sky is bleeding gold by the time Hashirama races up the hill overlooking the newest graves.

His father stands tall and strong, Tobirama mirroring him, while Itama is hunched over whimpering and rubbing at his eyes.

_Where’s Kawarama?_

“You finally decided to show up,” Butsuma says, his eyes never leaving the rapidly filling graves.

“I was practicing—”

“—You’re late.”

_You’re the one who sends me out every day._ Hashirama bites down the response. His eyes desperately scan the grounds and forest. Kawarama is nowhere to be found.

“Kawarama has fallen in battle to the Hagoromo,” Tobirama breaks the impasse between Hashirama and Butsuma, like he always does.

_He’s…Kawarama…he’s dead?_

The world tilts and shatters.

Hashirama falls to his knees, staring out over the graves. His brother’s grave _._

Itama chokes, his mourning cries for his lost twin growing louder.

“Shinobi do not cry!” Butsuma snaps. “Shinobi are born into this world to fight and die in battle. Be grateful that we even have a piece of his corpse to bury.” He doesn’t look at them, he keeps his eyes on the grave of his dead son.

Something twists inside Hashirama’s chest. The memories of the people in the compound, that horribly solemn air…

His conversation with Madara.

_“How many siblings do you have? I have three younger brothers.”_

_“…one brother.”_

His hands curl into the ground, fingers digging deep into the grass and earth. Hashirama’s own chakra mixes with the constant steady _thrum_ of the roots underneath him, trying to settle and calm him.

“Kawarama was only seven years old! How long will this kind of fighting continue?!”

“Until the last foe has been vanquished.”

Butsuma is merciless.

“And children must be sacrificed?”

Hashirama stares up at his father, small fists clenched by his side. Butsuma finally turns away from the graves, dark eyes blazing with unexpected fury.

“I will not allow Kawarama to be disrespected! He fought and died as a full-fledged shinobi! He was not a child!”

His fist slams into Hashirama’s cheek and he falls to the ground. Hashirama raises a hand to his cheek and chakra pools in his hand on instinct. He can feel cool green healing chakra spread over his cheek, the purpling bruise and small fractures sealing shut in an instant.

Butsuma turns away, in anger or disgust or both.

Tobirama and Itama race towards to his side. Tobirama is solemn and Itama hastily scrubs his face free of tears.

“Anija, are you okay?” Itama stares at his face.

“You know what happens when we try to defy Father,” Tobirama whispers.

_When I defy Father._ Hashirama doesn’t correct him. Not because Tobirama doesn’t defy Butsuma, he does in his own way, but because their punishments are wildly different. However usually Hashirama’s aren’t physical, paradoxically because of his healing ability. Bruises and broken bones, harsh physical lessons mean nothing to Hashirama in Butsuma’s mind because he can undo the ‘lesson’ almost immediately.

But Tobirama and Itama aren’t like him.

They don’t have the mokuton.

They don’t have a connection to the plants and their well of chakra.

They don’t have the ability to heal themselves.

And Butsuma keeps him hidden away in the forest, unable to fight, unable to heal, unable to _help._

_I don’t want my brothers to die in vain!_

Anger and bitterness fill him and Hashirama stands, shaking off Tobirama’s warning hands, ignoring Itama’s pleading look.

“Kawarama wasn’t a shinobi, he was a child! And you call us the clan of love. This isn’t _love,_ it’s grown-ups sending kids to their deaths! It’s an endless cycle that you won’t even try to stop!” Hashirama yells, his voice is aching and hoarse from hours of practicing Madara’s flushing call.

“It’s about honor! Everyone, even an infant wielding a weapon is deemed an enemy and should be treated as such! To raise a child to become a fully-fledged shinobi is the ultimate form of a parent’s love!”

“To be real shinobi you have to die?! We kill and are killed so much, you can’t even keep track of all the grudges! What use is that?! How it that honorable?! We can’t meet, we can’t give our names, even walking out the compound is a huge risk! That’s not right, there’s something wrong with this world!” He can feel tears building in his eyes. More words dance on the tip of his tongue, complaints that he’s swallowed down day after day just aching to be let free and make this already unstable situation worse.

“You’re a useless, spoiled child!” Butsuma snarls and steps forward, his fist raised again. Hashirama stands his ground, stares up defiantly. The mokuton hums under his skin, ready to burst free. But the punch doesn’t land.

Tobirama steps in the way, arms outstretched to protect him.

“Father!” He shouts and Butsuma stops. Hashirama doesn’t feel bitterness or envy, just a sudden rush of melancholy at the sight. Tobirama is the favorite son, but Hashirama will never be even an acceptable son. He was doomed since birth. “Anija is just emotional! He’s not thinking clearly. Please forgive him.”

Butsuma listens and looks past Tobirama to stare at him. _Don’t react, don’t get mad._ Hashirama clears his face but his hands still clench to fists behind his back. The trees whisper and he pushes them away.

“Go cool your head, Hashirama.” Butsuma spins on his heel and walks away.

_Banish me back to the forest, you mean._

Hashirama turns away too and is gratified when Itama and Tobirama follow him into the old-growth forest surrounding the compound.

They walk and eventually settle on the stump of an ancient tree. Hashirama sits in the center, at the innermost ring. He brushes his hand across it and feels the wisp of familiar yet foreign chakra rise from the tree. It speaks in a language Hashirama can’t understand, yet knows the shape of every time he draws on the mokuton.

_Does everyone speak to their affinities?_ It’s a question he wants to ask Tobirama, but something always stays his tongue. This is just another way that he is different, _other._ He can’t do a lot but Hashirama pushes his own chakra into the stump, centers himself and lets the tree take and take until green leaves bud at the edges.

_I can bring back the trees but not Kawarama._

The thought is sobering.

“Adults are stupid,” Tobirama says apropos of nothing.

“What?”

“If they want to stop the fighting, they should make a pact.” There’s little emotion in his voice, instead it’s presented as a straightforward solution to the problem.

“But…what about avenging our parents and brothers…and all our friends who have been killed?” Itama asks.

_He’s only seven._ The thought hits Hashirama like a physical blow to his chest. Itama is only seven, just like Kawarama was. Tobirama is only eight. He is only nine.

“Keep saying stuff like that and you’ll end up dead too. You and the adults are too emotional,” Tobirama scolds.

“Sorry…”

“Shinobi must suppress their emotions and create suitable rules that they then follow and avoid unnecessary conflict.” It’s such a _Tobirama_ -like plan, the smallest of smiles twists Hashirama’s lips.

“Can a true pact…an _alliance_ between enemy clans be achieved?” Madara’s scowling red face immediately springs to mind. If he _is_ a Neurno, which Hashirama shouldn’t be thinking because there are hundreds of small clans in Fire Country alone, the start of an alliance might be possible. If they gathered enough clans, not just a few traditionally allied clans here and there…

And the Neurno would be a good choice. After all their nocturnal tendency came from the nature of their jutsu, which was tied directly to the moon. They were human through and through, unlike some of the lesser clans.

Hashirama looks up but instead of exasperation like he expects to see, Tobirama is staring down at the giant trunk, arms crossed.

_There’s something else…_

“What is it?” Hashirama sighs and collapses on his back. Darkness is starting to creep through the heavy canopy, in less than half an hour everything will be pitch black.

“We fought the Hagoromo today…” Tobirama starts. _The Hagoromo killed Kawarama,_ goes unspoken but thought of by all three of them. “Has the tutor spoken to you about them, anija?”

“A bit. They think they’re nobles, not shinobi. They have that stone compound they hardly ever leave except to try and gain favor with small lords and oppose the current daimyo. Uh, they’re pretty rich because they have valuable minerals and control of a civilian settlement that has a port where three major rivers converge,” Hashirama rattles off, random bits and pieces coming back from his lessons.

Still, Tobirama is grim-faced.

“Am I missing something?” Now it is hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice. The tutor only teaches so much, can only toe the line of what Butsuma has deemed Hashirama worthy to know. He knows without a doubt there are missing gaps in his lessons. Secrets and special knowledge that should be taught in clan meetings. Meetings that Hashirama has _always_ been conveniently absent for, sent out into the forest or his lessons scheduled at that time, any excuse Butsuma can think of to keep him out.

“No, you’re right, anija. But that’s the thing, the Hagoromo view themselves as nobility, not shinobi. We’re enemies because they oppose the daimyo and we don’t but…” Tobirama trails off. Itama straightens, the color draining from his face.

“No…you’re not saying…” he whispers and Hashirama forces down tears of frustration. They don’t mean to do it, but he feels useless whenever they talk about things he doesn’t know, isn’t allowed to know.

Tobirama’s lips thin and he nods.

“They consider themselves nobility, but they’re not very strong. Rich and well-fortified, but they don’t usually fight. The fact that they ambushed us today probably means they feel secure they _can_. That if the Senju or another of our allied clans retaliates they’ll be able to defend themselves,” Tobirama takes a deep breath, his fingers digging into the pale skin of his arms, “and the Hagoromo have traditionally hired the Uchiha to fight for them. We may…we may need to consider that the crow-demons are traveling back to Fire Country.”

Hashirama shivers and feels goosebumps rise on his arms in the dying light.

“But we drove them out years ago! They’re some other country’s problem now!” Itama shouts, new tears gathering in his eyes.

_He’s always been easily frightened._ Hashirama remembers. So scared he couldn’t even stand to listen to scary stories. It was a favorite past time for both Hashirama and Kawarama, especially in the winter. They would sneak out of their father’s house and head down to one of the common districts in the compound to play with the low-born children. At night there was little to do that wouldn’t get them yelled at or scolded by adults, so scary stories were a common past-time.

They would return in the early hours of the morning, laughing and shushing one another. Tobirama, the lightest sleeper among them, would scold them as they stumbled back inside but he never told Butsuma. Itama was always too scared to sneak out and too scared of the stories that Kawarama would tease him mercilessly with later.

And of course, what scary story was complete without inhuman demons, so warped and twisted they could never be mistaken for humans, filled with nothing but burning hatred? Those stories scared Itama the most.

“They’re migratory. Father said it wasn’t unusual for them to leave the Land of Fire for a handful of years only to return. Just because we ambushed and crippled them last time doesn’t mean they would never return,” Tobirama says calmly, but the finger-shaped bruises he left on his arms tell a different story.

Tobirama was the only one of them to have actually been in a battle with the crow-demons. Not the ambush a couple of years ago, but his first battle where they killed Mother and almost killed him.

Tobirama still has nightmares about it.

“Do you think…will Father make us fight them?” Itama asks. Hashirama can barely see him, he has to squint to make out his form in the dark.

Tobirama is silent and that’s answer enough.

Itama starts to hiccup and cry, whispering that he doesn’t want the demons to kill him.

“It’ll be okay, Itama. We can train together if you’d like,” Hashirama offers as they pick their way from the old growth back to the compound. The electric lights in the distance are a welcoming yellow beacon.

“T-thanks, anija, but that’s too…it’s too dangerous in the forest,” Itama mutters under his breath and Hashirama forces his smile to remain as bright and cheery, even in the darkness.

_There’s a reason Butsuma sends him out alone every day._

“No problem! I’m sure Tobirama can help out in the compound, right?” He makes eye contact in the darkness and faintly sees Tobirama’s shoulders slump just a bit before he sighs and gives in.

“Of course. I’ll talk to Father and—”

“—thank you!” Itama grabs both of their hands and swings them back and forth as they come up to the compound. Hashirama’s smile comes easier now, _don’t think about Kawarama, don’t think about him._ There’s a gaping spot where he should be, Hashirama keeps expecting to catch him out of the corner of his eye. They reach the compound too soon. Hashirama squeezes, a small desperate plea to stay even as Itama drops his hand once the gates open and the night guards nod to them.

Tobirama and Itama straighten, less little brothers and more sons of Butsuma as they walk through the streets. Hashirama tries, and fails, not to feel out of place next to them.

____________________________________

It doesn’t really hit him until the next morning when he wakes up and realizes Kawarama isn’t coming to breakfast that his little brother is…gone.

He’s not coming back.

He’s dead.

_Dead. Dead. Dead._

Hashirama loses his appetite and pushes the food around in his bowl, ignoring Butsuma’s scowl. He sits in on his morning lesson with the tutor, distracted and solemn and the tutor blessedly pretends nothing is amiss, continuing on with his lesson about the current daiymo’s lineage.

In the early afternoon he has kenjutsu practice. This tutor is much less forgiving than the academic one, and Hashirama spends most of the lesson being tossed around, his sword knocked from his hands. He heals himself absently with each blow and he can see the tutor’s face slowly turning red with anger. But as angry as the man gets, he doesn’t draw blood. Not after last time when Hashirama’s chakra _reacted_ and vines wider than a man’s chest held the tutor down until he could be cut out. They still can’t use that training ground…

After his lessons, Hashirama heads towards the compound’s gate.

Everyone is still in shock from the recent ambush. Barely anyone is leaving the safety of their wooden walls, except Hashirama and a few unlucky low-born clan members. He nods at the guards who bow deeply and wish the Clan Heir continued safety and luck in the wilderness.

They don’t understand why he leaves every day but then they don’t understand the mokuton. _No one_ understands the mokuton, not even Hashirama.

He is the only one with the strange affinity, _a blessing from the Sage,_ a few elders whispered, _a curse, an omen of ruin,_ whispered others.

_Useless._ Snarled Butsuma when Hashirama couldn’t control his own power. Hashirama was physically strong and had impressive chakra control but he wasn’t a prodigy in ninjutsu like Tobirama or taijutsu like Itama.

His genjutsu was _laughable_ and he couldn’t sense chakra unless the person was right next to him.

Worse, the mokuton didn’t respond to traditional ninjutsu lessons. It was Hashirama’s strongest power but there was no one to help him master it fully. The only thing he had control over was healing, but that was a looked down upon art, something for women, not the Clan Heir. The healers would occasionally sneak him out under the cover of darkness to teach him the arts, but the women were _terrifying_ and he was sworn to secrecy lest his father finds out and punishes them all. So, Butsuma decided if Hashirama had some bastardization of a dual affinity that worked with plants, he should train by himself in the forest until he had a weapon worthy of the Senju name.

And so every day he left the compound’s walls and wandered out into the forest, hoping for _something._

Hashirama’s days were monotonous. But as boring as they were, he knew they wouldn’t last. There was only so long Butsuma could keep him from the battlefield, allowing Tobirama to go in his stead, a chance to prove himself before Hashirama did.

But the elders were growing tired of Butsuma’s stubbornness, his defiance against them.

Hashirama was the first-born son.

He was the Clan Heir, unless it could be proved he was unfit _~~or he died.~~_

But for now, he weaves through the trees, sidestepping bodies and blood of recent battlefields or the rotting corpses and bones of old ones. He lingered at the edges where past compounds had been overrun or burnt to the ground. He skirted far, _far_ away from the confirmed location of a past Uchiha compound.

The trees whispered, chakra pooled around him, but he didn’t know how to _use_ it.

He wandered listlessly, thoughts of Kawarama plaguing his mind.

A deep heaviness settled over him, an ache that radiated from his chest no matter what he did.

As the days drip by, the only thing that Hashirama looks forward to is his meeting with Madara.

But when the day comes, he wonders if the other boy will even show up.

Maybe Hashirama made up the entire thing and tricked himself into believing it, in believing he had a friend.

Maybe Madara isn’t even real.

He arrives at the river much earlier than they agreed to meet. The wind blows lightly through the budding trees, spring has finally settled, but Hashirama doesn’t feel the usual energy he would with the season. Instead, he picks up skipping stones, turning them over in his palms and throws them into the water. He doesn’t even try to skip them, just watches them _plonk_ and sink to the bottom of the river. 

“The master stone-skipper hard at work, I see.”

Hashirama startles and turns to see Madara behind him. He slipped from the forest like a shadow, making no noise even with his ridiculous wooden geta. The other boy is smirking at him, black eyes lit up with glee as Hashirama’s stone sinks in the water.

_He’s real._

_And he came. He really came._

Madara bends down to pick up a rock and walks up next to Hashirama. He tosses it up and down in his hand, then curls his wrist to skip it over the water.

It skips four times, and sinks into the shallow edge of the opposite bank, just missing the final hop up to the dry rocks.

Madara jerks and spins towards Hashirama, a large grin on his face.

“Hah! That counts, I reached the other side!”

The words, _no it doesn’t, you were three inches off from the dry bank, are you blind?_ rest at the tip of his tongue. But instead of speaking, Hashirama meets Madara’s eyes and promptly bursts into tears.

_Kawarama’s dead. He’s really dead and he’s never coming back._

Madara scrambles and moves closer, hesitantly crouching down beside him.

“H-hey, are you alright? What’s with the tears? One good throw doesn’t mean mastery—”

“—my…my brother,” Hashirama hiccups, he can barely breathe with how hard he’s crying and shaking, “my brother…he’s dead. He was killed.” He tightens his hands in his hakama until his fingers turn white and go numb.

“Oh…” Madara moves closer and Hashirama has to hold back from launching himself at the other boy. There’s a gaping hole in his chest. It’s spreading and spreading and it’ll eat him whole. “Um…” Madara’s hand hovers over him and then lightly touches his shoulder.

The feather-light touch snaps Hashirama’s control. He twists and grabs Madara in a hug, burying his face in the boy’s shoulder, all of Butsuma’s admonitions, _it’s not proper to touch so casually Hashirama, you are of higher birth than them act like it,_ forgotten.

Even better, Madara doesn’t struggle or push him away like the other high-born children would. He doesn’t flinch and hold incredibly still, like a mouse in the cat’s claws thinking they are unable to disobey or escape the way the middle-born and low-born children would. Instead, he grumbles under his breath and wraps his arm around Hashirama’s shoulders, pulling him close as he rests his head against Hashirama’s. He’s warm. Madara is _really_ warm.

They don’t speak.

Hashirama cries and cries, weeping and mourning for his dead brother. Madara is silent except for a low croon that picks up when Hashirama’s shaking grows so bad it leaves him choking for air until he starts to dry heave. 

Finally, after what feels like years but is probably only an hour at most, Hashirama’s tears stop. His eyes are swollen and red. His head throbs in time to his heartbeat and his whole-body _aches_ with exhaustion. He can feel the press of the mokuton, the trees’ worry and concern brushing over him.

Even after his tears dry, Hashirama doesn’t let go. He likes this small temporary refuge, likes being able to touch and hold on to someone else but the silence weighs on him. He’s always talking in the compound when he’s surrounded by others and in the forest, the trees always speak and whisper to him even if he can’t understand it. But here on the riverbank, he’s just far enough away from the forest that the whispering is muted without calling on the mokuton. And Hashirama is very aware of Madara’s hand and arm wrapped around him, the press of his cheek against the crown of Hashirama’s head, his slow and steady breath, and the _warmth_ that radiates from his skin.

Finally, Hashirama can’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, still pressed against Madara.

“For what?” Madara shifts on the hard rocks, pulls back just a bit to meet Hashirama’s eyes but he doesn’t take his arm from Hashirama’s shoulders or push him away. 

“Shinobi don’t cry,” he was trying so hard to be strong. He was a joke of an older brother, but he still wanted to at least _try_ to reassure Tobirama and Itama. But here he is, breaking down a week later.

“Yeah shinobi don’t,” Madara says and Hashirama flinches and curls up, even then he can’t bring himself to move away, “but _people_ do.”

“Huh?”

Madara is silent for a long moment.

“To our enemies we are shinobi, to our family we are people. It’s important to separate the two, that way you know when to switch back and forth. A shinobi one moment, a person the next.”

There’s something a little unsettling about that, but Hashirama is so tired the full implication escapes him. Instead, he hears that Madara isn’t mocking him for crying and is letting him stay curled around him.

He really _is_ Hashirama’s friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To contrast with the Uchiha, I decided to make the Senju have a super strict hierarchy and a few, ahem, *issues* with sexism and appropriately male/female coded work, ninja or otherwise. (Seriously though medic-nin do not get the goddamn credit/reverence they deserve in canon, istg. That'll change, just give me a couple of chapters.) The Senju (and most clans, let's be real) also consistently dehumanize the Uchiha (and a few other clans) by calling them demons and other derogatory names. It'll take a while for this mindset and Hashi and other Senju to change and this is the main focus of the 'discrimination' that I tagged for the fic. Though I will say this isn't turning into, oh the Uchiha are perfect sweethearts with the entire world unfairly against them and they have no problematic issues (they do, it'll come up). 
> 
> I also really like the general concept of the mokuton being this weird *other* thing. An affinity yes, but also much more than that. (Also Ashura never had the mokuton here, this is exclusive to Hashirama alone power). Hashi is a little touched-starved fae baby, and I love him. I'm going to be mean to him, but I love him. 
> 
> Next chapter is HashiMada fluff, I *swear* 
> 
> I also post more HashiMada stuff on [Tumblr](https://mira--mira.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! It means a lot to me! <3


	6. Food and Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Struggling to edit the chapter of my BNHA fic, so my brain jumps ship and screams post this one, so here's an odd middle of the week update.
> 
> Healthy portrayals of masculinity and the Uchiha acknowledging their emotions even if they (Madara) struggle to put them into words in my Uchiha-centric fic? It's more likely than you think.
> 
> On a side note, this is...not the chapter I planned to write. But then I made the mistake of asking myself, 'what kind of food do the Uchiha eat and how does the whole Tengu-ness affect that?' and well...I spiraled. I was barely holding myself back from extensive accounts of detailing how the Uchiha categorize 'family' and how they avoid the physical complications of inbreeding (I have answers, don't worry) and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have to understand diets and kinship are *the* bread and butter of anthropology. I felt the ghosts of several prominent 19th and 20th-century anthropologists watch me in a mix of pride and horror as I detailed out specific practices, barely managing to stop myself from writing a mini ethnography, to create a snapshot society for the gay Naruto ninja version of Romeo and Juliet, a string of words that I am pretty confident was never strung together in their times. 
> 
> So...enjoy!

Madara walks away from the river and Hashirama feeling cold.

It’s an unusual sensation. He’s used to touching cold things but not feeling cold himself. But after holding Hashirama for _hours_ as he cried and clung so hard like he thought Madara was going to disappear or push him away…

It was the desperation that was unsettling, Madara decides as he slowly makes his way back to the Uchiha compound. It was a desperate touch in a peaceful, relatively safe situation. The closest he’d ever felt was with sick cousins when they emerged from the Sick Yurts. Isolation and quarantine were terrible but necessary so the entire clan didn’t succumb to the illness. The Uchiha had so few healers, even less medicine, and only two people in the entire clan could infuse weak healing chakra.

When the sickness finally passed the people that came out would cling and touch because they hadn’t been able to for weeks. But it was still…different. They wanted reassurance, the comfort of familiarity after not having it for so long. Madara remembers last winter when Naori caught the wheezing sickness. Illness was rare when food was plentiful, but no matter when came, it was utterly vicious. Naori was bedridden for weeks, separated in a Sick Yurt for almost two months.

Almost as tactile as Izuna, when she left there was hardly a moment she wasn’t draped over someone, holding their hand, or otherwise pressed as physically close as possible. But even then, there wasn’t _desperation_ in her touch.

He can’t easily put it into words. How do you describe a touch as desperate or not? Maybe he’s overthinking it. Hashirama just lost his brother, that kind of grief overwhelmed everything else.

But still, Madara feels uneasy. The urge to comfort and croon still bubbled up within him and that’s equally disconcerting.

Hashirama wants to be his friend…but he’s not family.

He’s from a different clan…but he’s not an enemy.

It’s a paradox, one that Madara has never had to deal with. His world has always been separated into two clean categories: friend or foe, which has always lined up with _Uchiha or other._

He’s so distracted his feet mindlessly take him back home and it isn’t until the glow of fire and smoke surrounds him that he realizes he’s entered the compound.

His stomach growls and Madara heads towards the Big Yurt. It’s late enough that some have finished eating, mostly those on guard duty and parents with extremely young children who’ll fall asleep when the moon rises. His cousins brush easily pass him. Their light touches, ones Madara is so used to, he’s now hyperaware of. A touch on his shoulder here, a hand trailing across his head there. Smaller children reaching out to pat at his legs and hips as he walks by.

It’s so _normal._

_What kind of clan does Hashirama live with?_

Madara slips into the Big Yurt. The line to the central fire is short. He picks his way through the gathered groups of Uchiha sitting together on the floor. There are no bonfire or flicker performances tonight, they’re meeting with the Hagoromo in two days’ time after all, but the Big Yurt is filled with chattering voices and laughter. At the fire, Tomoya ladles him a large bowl of stew.

“Guess what finally got delivered today?” Tomoya asks with a grin.

Madara looks up at him in confusion before a bright flash of red in his stew catches his attention.

 _Tomatoes?_ Madara sucks in a breath. _No, no way, we haven’t gotten tomatoes in—_ but his excitement dims when he sees they’re conal, not round. But it returns just as quickly because, they might not be tomatoes but they’re—

“Sharingan peppers!”

They haven’t had the peppers in _years_. The Land of Iron and the northernmost part of the Land of Earth was too cold a climate for them to grow properly. And now even in the native warmer climates, they were an increasingly rare commodity because of their exact shade and connection to the old beliefs.

_Smoking red twine_

_Wrapped around a branch of pine_

_Capsicum, the color of the pinwheel eye_

_A final shining token to signify_

_Will summon those with the gifts of the divine._

Madara remembers the old rhyme as he takes the bowl from Tomoya. The ritual is hardly used by anymore and instead the rhyme is used to soothe scared Uchiha children, though once Madara had to chase Izuna down once when he tried to light a pine tree on fire because he couldn’t find his age-mates in a game. Even without katons he was a menace.

Now, instead of peppers, twine, and shining tokens the believers in Iron Country and the reluctant farmers in Fire and Tea Country hang offering baskets of apples, tomatoes, cranberries, or pomegranates from pine trees with their requests or meeting locations buried at the bottom.

There are benefits of being a clan that will work for food in place of money.

“Enjoy,” Tomoya ruffles his hair and Madara’s bump in mood slowly shrivels as he’s reminded once again of Hashirama and that grasping, desperate touch.

Madara nods to Tomoya and turns away, bowl in hand. He glances in the direction that he, Hikaku, and Naori usually sit. There are too many people sitting and standing to see them clearly but he’s sure they’re still here. Izuna would be close by with Takeshi and Kiyoko, plotting out pranks and schemes to terrorize them all with if he could get Kiyoko to overcome her shyness and if Takeshi wasn’t distracted by Ichiro.

It’s a familiar and comfortable routine, to sit with his friends and laugh. No bonfire tonight, so they’d stay in the Big Yurt talking until the moon rose and Madara inevitably was the first one to fall asleep, despite the others’ teasing. Naori and Izuna would then fight over who got to gather soot from the fire and smear it over his face. Hikaku would distract them both and then force Takeshi or Kiyoko to help him carry Madara back to Tajima’s yurt. Then Hikaku would bully Madara awake and tell him he was another favor further into his already extensive debt, all while gloating like an overly smug magpie.

But for tonight, Madara turns away from his routine and looks for Tajima.

He’s not hard to find. Several cousins surround him, coming up at varying intervals to sit in his circle and speak with him. It’s not a clan meeting so grievances and serious conversations are rarely had.

But the real reason it’s always easy to find Tajima in a crowd is because he’s always surrounded by his seconds. Kaede, despite her height, blends in with the other Uchiha, just as Yua, Hikaku’s mother does. But Hikaku’s father, Meirou, is the only person in the clan with bright blond hair.

A raised Uchiha, not a born one.

Madara walks up to them as Meirou finishes up a story about a recent attempted pickpocket.

“Of course once he turned around, I helped myself to his hefty purse,” Meirou finishes and the adults break out into titters and laughter.

“Another!” Kaede says and wraps her arm around his shoulders.

“The one with the waterfall!”

“No, no the old shrine in Iron!”

“Oh, gods the _bathhouse_!”

Father turns towards him as Meirou launches into the next story about a bathhouse in Lightning where one of their cousins slipped in the target’s bathwater while he was in it.

“Can I sit with you?” Madara asks. Father blinks in surprise, it’s not something Madara usually asks for. Izuna’s the one more likely to crawl into his lap when he’s feeling down or woken up by blood-soaked nightmares.

“Of course.”

Madara slips into the open space between Tajima’s crossed legs, carefully balancing his stew so it doesn’t spill. He settles and feels his father kiss the top of his head.

“Sounosuke panicked and the entire bathhouse went up in flames. The target was flash-fried right there in his bathwater. I was laughing so hard he had to haul me back to camp. Only twelve summers and I was draped across his back…fuck he was a good kid.” The mood dampens, Sounosuke was killed by the Senju in the same battle they killed Mother.

“I remember he could barely tell which way to point a kunai but give him shuriken…damn he had a good aim,” Yua adds and the stories shift to solemn remembrance ones.

Once Madara finishes eating he sets the bowl aside and curls up with his side pressed against Tajima’s chest. Both of Father’s arms wrap around him and Madara starts to nod off as he feels the moon rise outside. The adults’ voices blur and become comforting background noise along with the crackle of the large central fire and the occasional shrieking laugh from someone else in the Big Yurt.

Madara wakes only briefly as Tajima picks him up and carries him back to their yurt. He blearily notices being set down on Father’s futon rather than his own. He’s almost asleep again when a smaller body, Izuna, slides in behind him.

Madara hisses, now completely awake as Izuna brushes against the scar on his back. It pulses with phantom pain and Madara clenches his fists in the blankets. Father still has the heavy winter ones on his futon, so his clipped talons don’t quite pierce through the material.

“Sorry, aniki,” Izuna whispers and wriggles until he’s draped over Madara’s side and chest.

“’s fine,” he grumbles as Father banks the hearth fire and settles on his opposite side. Barely minutes have passed but Izuna is already asleep. His energy isn’t as tied to the sun as Madara’s is, but they train hard enough that nothing can stop the initial swell of exhaustion.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tajima asks in the gloom. He’s lying on his side, one arm pillowed under his head, the other wrapped around Madara and Izuna.

Madara doesn’t even know how to put what he’s feeling into words. But then even if he could, words have never been his strong suit and they’d probably come out wrong. He’s always preferred to act instead.

_Wait…that’s the solution._

At least the start of one.

Hashirama’s too old to take, and besides he’s from a shinobi clan not a civilian. Madara can’t change whatever weird clan Hashirama lives with but he can treat him like an Uchiha since he’s already a…friend. He can offer touch as something easy and normal and hope the _desperation_ that lingers disappears.

“No, I figured it out,” Madara whispers and presses his face into Tajima’s collarbone.

“All right,” another kiss on the top of his head and then the arm pulls him and Izuna closer.

Next week when Madara meets Hashirama by the river, he intends to keep his silent promise.

That day after training and his usual visit to the aviary then nursery, Madara gathers his tools and straps a tall woven basket to his back. He’s meeting Hashirama today, but he also needs to gather elm bark for the weavers.

Before he leaves the compound, he grabs one last thing from his yurt. Two wooden bentos wrapped in a large red furoshiki. Madara only hesitates for a moment before settling the boxes in the basket. Part of him, a large part, seethes at the thought of giving away any of the clan’s food. Every scrap was precious, and he knew this moment would come back to haunt him in the next scarce winter when his stomach cramped and seized and Father’s cheekbones nearly split his skin open because he gave his portions to Madara. Izuna would try to slip him part of his too and Madara would only be strong enough to refuse part of the time.

_The stronger the fire, the more it must consume._

But to not feed his…friend would be a worse offense.

So Madara packs away his bentos and makes his way to the river.

Hashirama is already at the bank, skipping stones. Today he’s actually skipping them, not just throwing them listlessly into the water like he was last week. Madara forces down his irritation as every rock Hashirama skips effortlessly clatters to the opposite shore. He’s been practicing but besides that one throw, can’t make it to the other bank.

The other boy hasn’t noticed him yet.

Madara smirks as he glides silently over the stones. Hashirama still doesn’t notice him, not even as he gets close enough to reach out and touch the other boy’s back.

“HASHIRAMA!” Madara yells as loud as he can.

Hashirama startles and falls forward into the shallow water with a shriek. He twists, hands rising up to form a seal but when he sees it’s Madara, they splash harmlessly back into the water.

He’s saying something but Madara can’t hear him over the sound of his own laughter. He’s bent over at the waist, laughing so hard he starts snorting. His _face_! That _shriek_!

“You’re so mean, Madara-chan,” Hashirama crosses his arms and pouts. Madara is so amused, he’ll even let that godsdamn nickname slide this time.

Slowly he gains control of himself and straightens up. Still chuckling under his breath, Madara pushes chakra into his geta. It immediately tries to spark into flame before he wrangles it into a neutral state. Madara steps out onto the surface of the water and extends a hand to Hashirama’s drenched form.

“And you’re as observant as a rock. Also, if you even _think_ of pulling me in—”

“What’re you going to do, huh? Gut me and throw me in the river? I’m already in the river,” Hashirama snickers and splashes water at him. Madara resists the urge to splash back. He has food and if they start a water fight, it’ll get soaked.

“I have something for you but if you pull me in, it’ll get ruined,” Madara says. Hashirama stops splashing and leans forward, wide-eyed.

“A present?”

“…not really,” food wasn’t a _present,_ at least not this kind. But Hashirama isn’t listening.

“A present! You got me a present,” he starts sniffling and Madara bites back a sigh, shaking his still extended hand.

“It’s _not_ a present. But if you want it, take my hand and get out of the water,” he snaps and finally Hashirama reaches up to grab his hand. His talons are clipped, but he’s still careful not to prick Hashirama’s skin.

Madara glares at him, and though he can see the hint of a devious smirk, Hashirama doesn’t try to yank him into the water. Madara pulls him out and listens to the boy’s complaints about his waterlogged clothes and Madara’s too-warm hand as they make their way to a shady spot under the trees.

Madara sets his basket down and pulls out the bentos. He swats Hashirama’s hand away before the other boy can grab at the boxes. After unwrapping the furoshiki and laying it on the ground, Madara hands Hashirama a bento and chopsticks.

“Food?” Hashirama slides the top off. “A picnic? I haven’t had a picnic in _ages_!”

 _What’s a picnic?_ Madara wonders as Hashirama glomps onto him, wrapping two wet arms around his neck. But then he freezes, holding stock-still as if he were bracing himself for the worst.

“Don’t spill the food!” Madara screams but pats Hashirama’s wet back. _My yukata is going to be damp now._ The other boy relaxes against him before pulling away, a wide smile on his face. He picks up his chopsticks and Madara has to swat his hand away again before he can start eating.

“I want to try it!” He’s back to pouting and Madara feels his eye twitch in annoyance.

“Have some basic manners,” he says and picks up his own chopsticks. Hashirama opens his mouth to say something else, but before he can Madara reaches out and grabs a piece of venison from Hashirama’s bento. The other boy squints at him as Madara takes a piece from his own and then extends his box out to Hashirama. “Well?” He shakes it.

Hashirama slowly reaches out and picks out a piece of venison from Madara’s box. Only then to take one bite before spitting it back out.

Madara physically recoils and isn’t prepared for the sudden rush of rage and anger mixed with actual hurt and betrayal.

Hashirama’s face is flushed red, eyes watering.

“This isn’t a funny prank,” Hashirama says, tongue sticking out of his mouth. It slurs his words and makes his glowering face look ridiculous.

“What’s wrong with you?!” Madara pushes himself to his feet. “I gave you food and you just…just spat it out!” His face and throat are hot, he can feel chakra building up in his sternum. Refusing food was rude but eating some only to spit it out was an _insult_.

“Come on, Madara. It’s way too spicy to eat, I know it’s a prank,” Hashirama crosses his arms, a cloud of depression hovering over him.

“‘Too spicy’? What does that even mean?!” The wooden bento creaks dangerously in his hands. Madara doesn’t understand _why._ Why would Hashirama spit out perfectly good food? It wasn’t rotten and it wasn’t prohibited. That only left he was trying to start a fight, but _why?_

“Seriously?! My tongue is on fire, my entire face is burning and I barely took one bite! It’s too hot!” Hashirama straightens and argues back.

“That doesn’t make sense! It’s cold, it hasn’t been warmed over a fire, you idiot!” Madara yells. First, it was _too spicy_ , what does that even _mean_? And now it’s too hot when it’s obviously cold food?!

He wants to scream and shriek and pull at his feathers and hair, he’s so frustrated.

“Wait…you really don’t know what I’m talking about?” Hashirama squints at him.

“NO!”

“I wanna watch you eat some.”

Madara bites back _you already watched me eat some_ but only barely. None of this makes sense. He’s confused and angry but _he’s_ not going to be the one to waste good food. _See if I ever bring you food again._ Madara doesn’t sit down, instead he eats standing up, glaring at Hashirama.

Hashirama who’s looking more and more confused as he eats his _perfectly good lunch._

“You don’t think it’s too spicy? It literally burned my mouth!” Madara rolls his eyes. It’s _food,_ not _fire,_ it can’t burn anything! Hashirama picks at the food in his box and eats another small piece of venison. And while he doesn’t spit it out this time, he makes a face as he swallows and then sticks his tongue back out. “See? Too hot.”

“What does that mean, Hashirama?! Do you want to fight or not?!” Madara throws his empty bento on the furoshiki. 

“No, I don’t want to fight! I thought we were friends!” Hashirama exclaims, wide-eyed.

“So did I!” Madara yells back.

Neither says anything for a long moment. Madara is looming above Hashirama, heat burning in his chest. Hashirama, who does _not_ look properly threatened by Madara’s looming, frowns and taps his chin.

“Why do you think I want to fight you?”

“You spat out perfectly good food that I gave you! What else could that mean?!” Madara bristles.

“I thought it was a prank! You purposefully gave me food that was too spicy to eat,” Hashirama says and Madara at the end of his rope.

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!!” Madara bends down and shakes Hashirama’s shoulders.

“What, ‘spicy’?”

“YES!”

“Madara, peppers are _spicy_. There were peppers in the food. They were _hot_ peppers. So the food was _really_ spicy,” Hashirama explains slowly, with a deceptively innocent face.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” Madara smacks his head but then thinks his words over. “So you…can’t eat food with peppers in it?” Is it like a prohibition? But Hashirama implied that he physically couldn’t eat it, not that he wasn’t supposed to eat it.

“Maybe food with _mild_ peppers, but not those crazy spicy ones,” Hashirama mutters and rubs the spot Madara smacked.

“What’s the difference?! Peppers all taste the same!”

“Uh, no they don’t.”

“Yes, they do!”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do!”

“No, they don’t.”

Madara spins away with a scream, pacing back and forth.

How did he forget how annoying and aggravating Hashirama could be?! The chakra that had been building up in his chest spilled over and there was no choking it back this time. But he couldn’t start spitting fire here, not in front of Hashirama.

Madara kept ahold of that thought as he storms down to the river’s edge, ignoring Hashirama’s calls behind him. He pulls off his yukata with shaking hands and then submerges himself in the ice-cold water. It’s not deep, this is a shallow bend of the river, but it’s high enough that in the center the water laps up to his lower ribs.

Madara crouches and the water swirls up over his chest and starts to steam and bubble around him. He takes a deep breath and plunges his head in. It’s hard to fight against the instinct and surface. Water is fine but being _underwater…_

 _It’s fine. It’s fine. This is the quickest way._ Madara reminds himself. He can’t use a katon in front of Hashirama, he can’t reveal his family’s recognizable techniques.

The water strips the heat and anger from his skin, until his burning chakra simmers back down to a more manageable flame instead of an out of control wildfire. When he can’t handle the water pressing around him any longer, Madara bursts to the surface. He’s gasping for air as he moves back towards the shore, picks up his fallen yukata, and makes his way back to Hashirama.

He collapses face-first on the furoshiki, drained and wet. And there’s still their argument. Great.

“I’m sorry for spitting out the food,” Hashirama whispers above him and Madara nearly sighs in relief.

“Food is precious, you can’t just waste it. You just _can’t,_ Hashirama. But I didn’t know about your thing with peppers,” though he still had trouble believing that Hashirama apparently tasted different flavors and some of them _burned_ so bad it was painful to eat, “so it’s okay this time.”

“We’re still friends, right?” Hashirama asks as he lays down next to Madara.

“Yeah.” Madara rolls onto his back. Hashirama inches closer until Madara can feel his damp clothes. _He still hasn’t dried off?_ It’s been at _least_ ten minutes. Madara’s pants are still damp but his skin and hair are already drying.

“I can bring bentos next week to make it up to you, if that’s okay…” Hashirama’s practically speaking into Madara’s shoulder at this point. He can feel the other boy’s breath on his skin.

“Yeah! Just…don’t put in any poultry or eggs,” Madara is cheered by the idea. Reciprocating food is important and if they switch every week, he won’t actually be taking food from the Uchiha stores, it’ll even out! But it’s probably a good idea to tell Hashirama what he can’t eat and find out what the other can’t in return so another… _incident_ doesn’t happen.

Madara tilts his head to look at Hashirama. The other boy’s brows are furrowed in confusion before he gives a little shrug and nods. Madara feels a light pressure against his wrist. He reaches up and grabs Hashirama’s hand, linking their fingers together.

Besides Hashirama’s hand being _freezing cold,_ it’s nice.

A blush spreads across his brown cheeks.

Madara needs to get up and find those elm trees for the weavers but for now, he stays right where he is. And when Hashirama smiles at him, he smiles back and squeezes their intertwined hands.

The week after Hashirama makes good on his promise to bring bento but he only brings one.

“Sorry, I asked for extra food but the cook would find it suspicious if I tried to take a second bento,” Hashirama apologizes and hands Madara a pair of chopsticks. As long as he’s being fed it’s fine but sharing from the same bento is usually… _intimate._

He quickly forgets that line of thinking because it’s then that Madara notices the bento is made of _porcelain._ The last time he saw porcelain, it was being thrown at him by a desperate daimyo's servant when the Uchiha were hired to kill her lord.

 _Is he a Hagoromo?_ That’s the only shinobi clan Madara knows that can afford to use porcelain on a large scale. But while Hashirama might wear white, his ridiculous clothes aren’t in the overly formal kimono styles that the swans were so fond of. Plus there’s no way a _Hagoromo_ wouldn’t recognize Madara.

And then he looks in the bento and there are _cherry_ _tomatoes._

Three of them.

Right there.

Hashirama is eating the onigiri and Madara is quick to follow suit, but his eyes never leave the small red spheres. They finish off the bento, kamaboko fish cakes, boiled lotus slices, and some kind of grilled fish by the look of it, until all that remain are the three tomatoes.

“Did you like it?” Hashirama asks and pokes one of the tomatoes.

“Yes.” The food was _weird,_ nothing had any prominent flavor, but the textures were nice. More importantly, it was food and everyone _liked_ food.

Hashirama beams and tilts the bento towards him.

“Do you like tomatoes? Because I don’t—”

Madara snatches all three before Hashirama can finish speaking. He pops one in his mouth and hides the other two in his obi. He’ll have the second later this afternoon when they go hunting and the third when he heads back to the compound.

“I guess so.” Hashirama smirks and Madara scowls at him.

“You’re stupid for not liking them.”

Hashirama wilts, a dark cloud hanging over him.

“You’re so _mean_ , Madara-chan—”

Madara tackles him and they go rolling in the grass.

“Stop calling me that!”

“But it fits so well!” Hashirama snickers.

“Well…what if I call you…” Madara fumbles, searching for something, _anything_ but his mind is coming up blank, “Hashi!” They pause, Hashirama currently on top, with both of Madara’s hands pushing against his shoulders.

“A nickname! I love it!” He collapses on top of Madara, knocking the breath from his lungs.

“Then I’m never gonna call you that,” Madara wheezes.

“Aw, Madara! Please?” Hashirama inches up his chest, knocking his cheek against Madara’s.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pleeeeeease?”

“No.”

“Puh-leeeeeeeeease?!”

“No!” 

The next week Madara brings two bentos and tries his best to choose foods that don’t have Sharingan peppers and tastes similarly flavorless like the food Hashirama brought. He takes his customary piece from Hashirama’s bento and then his own. When Hashirama picks out a piece of dried rabbit from Madara’s box, he watches Hashirama’s reaction closely. He eats it, he eats everything his bento but there’s still a _weird_ look on his face.

And for the first time, Madara feels compelled to ask, “Did you like it?”

“Um,” Hashirama’s eyes dart away.

“Be honest.”

“It’s fine! But…a little…bland?” Hashirama says carefully and Madara scoffs.

“Of course it’s bland! There aren’t any Shar—uh, peppers and I was trying to match what you gave me last time,” Madara mutters and finishes the last of his onigiri.

“You thought my bento was bland? I thought you liked it.” Hashirama pouts.

“It _was_ bland, and I _did_ like it.”

“…you confuse me, Madara.”

The week after, when Hashirama opens his ridiculous porcelain bento, almost a dozen cherry tomatoes spill out, the bento is so full of them. Madara looks at them and then turns to Hashirama who has the faintest blush high on his cheeks.

“I don’t like them but you really do, and we have a lot so I thought…” he trails off and gestures to the bento, blush darkening.

Something light and warm twists in Madara’s chest, leaving him nearly breathless. For a moment he aches even looking at Hashirama. Madara reaches over slowly, the other boy looks skittish enough to startle, and wraps his arms around Hashirama’s neck.

Hashirama sucks in a little gasp and hugs him tighter.

“Thank you, Hashi,” Madara whispers against his neck.

“You’re welcome.”

When Madara’s stomach growls several minutes later, he slowly pulls back. Hashirama smiles softly at him before it twists into a devious smirk. Any light and warm feeling in his chest quickly cools to irritation, and Madara already expects the next stupid comment.

“So much for ‘never’ calling me Hashi,” Hashirama gloats. Madara rolls his eyes and pops a cherry tomato in his mouth.

“Don’t push it.”

“But _you said_ —”

“Hashirama.”

“I’m just repeating _your words_ —”

“I’m going to gut you and throw you into the river.” Madara picks up his chopsticks and helps himself to the bento as Hashirama falls over laughing. He rolls his eyes at the other’s antics but reaches over to grab his hand and tug Hashirama into a sitting position to eat.

Madara doesn’t let go of his hand afterward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hashirama is *distressingly* good at accidentally flirting in a distinctly Uchiha way. Pretty soon he's going to be asking Madara to sing specifically for him and giving him shiny rocks and hell, that's practically an engagement right there. 
> 
> At this point, I'm starting to add in some bird characteristics that aren't really seen in raptors or crows but make for a more interesting culture, in my opinion. The notable one here, that often appears in other stories, is the Uchiha love spicy food. Here, the relationship is slightly different because they love peppers not because firey=spicy, which is the connection I think is usually drawn, but because of their bright color. (Also let's be real, if they're constantly facing starvation/food shortages that would create an entire culture that emphasizes the importance of food and leads to some v strict practices being observed. Food is a **very** touchy subject.) 
> 
> Fun pepper fact, "Sharingan peppers" are based on real-life "Bird's eye chili" which are used in Ethiopian and Southeast Asian cuisine and are very distinctly bright red...it's literally a *bird's eye chili*, how could I not??
> 
> Anyways, birds generally have fewer taste buds than humans and don't have capsaicin receptors, the thing that makes peppers "burn." So the Uchiha are a mixed bag of qualities. They *do* have capsaicin receptors but only very weak, ineffective ones. Combined with fewer taste buds overall, at best peppers taste "tingly" to them. They don't have a concept for hotness/spiciness because they *literally* can't taste it. Peppers (and other red food) are appealing because of their bright color, easily recognizable as food (and Ucihiha cultural connotation with red). In addition, because I thought it was a cool concept, their sense of smell is also abysmal. In humans smell and taste are heavily intertwined, I found reports on fewer taste buds across most bird species compared to humans but nothing specifically about how smell is affected by this. Predatory birds (especially scavengers) *do* have a developed sense of smell, however. But *then* I started thinking about how a very insular culture would define food as 'good' or 'tasty' if they have an extremely poor sense of smell/taste and rely heavily on sight. Obviously the visual aspect is important, but as for actually eating it's all about *textures*. Good textures and good visuals make good food, rather than the so-called taste. 
> 
> I do want to emphasize, however, the Uchiha don't lack a sense of taste, it's just very poorly developed on a comparable base human scale. Whenever they *do* decide flavor needs to be emphasized they "over-season" whatever it is they're making until they can taste it. This leads people (Hashirama) into some interesting culinary experiences eating Uchiha food. And likewise, no matter what tasty food he brings for Madara, unless it's extremely pungent, Madara won't be able to taste anything. 
> 
> I'm not going to touch too much on the 'family' aspect yet (that'll come later) but since Meirou debuted here, the Uchiha have two main ways of continuing their bloodline/kekkei genkai in a very small clan (around 200~ people total) without inbreeding. The one hinted here, being a raised Uchiha and Madara's thought of "taking" Hashirama, is actually a nod to Tengu mythology. 
> 
> Tengu were...um, known for kidnapping children. Just. Yeah. Most of the time this didn't lead to anything good but there are a few notable warriors who were trained by them, Minamoto no Yoshitsune probably the most famous. Here, whenever the Uchiha are given assassination contracts (which are...pretty much their only contracts, their reputation as demons mean they're hired for only one thing) they'll take in any children under 5 from their target(s) and raise them as Uchiha. A lot of these children don't survive, very harsh conditions, poor infant mortality of the time, constant fighting, etc. but they're always from civilian backgrounds not other shinobi clans. They're viewed as Uchiha by the clan despite the lack of tengu-qualities and no natural Sharingan. It's very common for the raised Uchiha to paint/stain their nails black and braid their family member's feathers into their own hair to mimic these characteristics. Often if they have a large amount of chakra, their parents or siblings will give them one of their own Sharingan eyes (Uchiha eye-sharing is at an all-time high here folks).
> 
> I now realize I went on an extensive bird/anthropology/world-building ramble...hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> I also post more HashiMada stuff on [Tumblr](https://mira--mira.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! It means a lot to me! <3


	7. Discoveries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back after a bit of a tough patch irl with a chapter that's literally 1/3 of the entire length of the fic. I...I don't know what happened here but there's A Lot in this one, folks.
> 
> Alternate chapter titles for this one: "Mednins are amazing and deserve all of the love and reverence so help me god--" or "oh damn this was supposed to be pure fluff, where'd this angst come from?" or "Madara and Hashirama, masters of Not Thinking About Things"
> 
> Also, a quick note on the Sharingan. This was supposed to be in the notes for the first chapter, then last chapter but, uh, guess who used up all the characters in her notes twice??? So! Since the Uchiha are trading eyes all the time, here are a few other restrictions so eternal mangekyo sharingans (ems) aren't appearing left and right and we don't go completely OP. The eyes' *original owner* is the only one that can unlock the base sharingan and mangekyo sharingan (ms). Even if two Uchiha trade eyes, the new owner cannot unlock base or ms if the original owner had not. The requirements for ems remain the same. 
> 
> There is also a biological block on the Sharingan. Remember in early naruto when using the Sharingan was a *big* deal? Like, that thing would drain you dry of chakra if you weren't careful and Kakashi fell into a coma for a week after using his in the wave arc? I'm not quite going to coma level, but the Sharingan takes a *lot* of charka to use. If it were awakened too soon, before the Uchiha's chakra reserves were developed and large enough to support it, the Sharingan would kill them. So, this in mind, there is a biological "block" that prevents the Uchiha from awakening the Sharingan until their chakra reserves pass a certain point. This is why, despite having children on the battlefield, most sharingan don't awaken until 8-12. This is also why, in this au, despite seeing his mother and one brother die in front of him, Madara didn't awaken the Sharingan at 5 or 7. This same "block" also applies to awakening the ms. This is my headcanon to explain why the Sharingan awakens in some traumatic and grief-filled situations but not others, as well as why having the ms is still a rare thing even though in the warring states period people watched their best friend/loved ones die all the time. 
> 
> However, since the block is a biological restriction, this means it's susceptible to failure in two ways. First, the block doesn't engage and a child too young to support a sharingan awakens it and subsequently dies. This is rare, but it's known to happen and is also why raised Uchiha aren't given sharingan until they're at *least* 12. The same thing can happen with ms, but it is rarer since presumably, the base block worked as intended. Second, sometimes the block never disengages. So you can have an adult Uchiha with developed reserves who never awakened the Sharingan and won't have access to it unless another clan member gives them one. This is, as you can imagine, Not Good and is filled with a lot of implications. Children who haven't awakened their Sharingan by 13~ are usually filled with anxiety and stress and have to come to terms that they can't unlock it, despite the grief and pain they've experienced. There actually is a character or two already introduced with this it just...hasn't come up yet lol. 
> 
> Have my, not at all, quick note and now the chapter!
> 
> Enjoy!

Months pass and budding spring blooms into blazing summer.

Every week he can, Madara meets Hashirama by the river. Both of them try not to say much about their clans, politics, or name anything identifiable that would shatter their fragile oasis of peace. Madara is aware, more than Hashirama, that he’s sitting and speaking with a clan enemy. Madara is Hashirama’s friend and of course, he’s curious about the other boy, but Madara doesn’t want to know too many details. As they are now, he can still claim ignorance and skirt around his duty to kill any threat to the Uchiha. It’s enough for him to enjoy Hashirama’s presence.

But it’s impossible not to pick things up and reveal them in turn.

Every time they meet Madara has chores and responsibilities. There is always something that needs to be done, things to hunt, raw materials to gather and no time to slack off since he has shinobi practice in the mornings.

But Madara wants to spend more than an hour or two with Hashirama, so he has no choice but to drag the other along. Hashirama doesn’t complain. He watches Madara gather clay deposits, search for the special fire-resistant salts, collect roots and inedible plants for dye…he watches it all and Madara tells himself there’s nothing inherently wrong with Hashirama knowing the location of the resources. Other clans have to use them too, right? Sometimes Madara wishes he got assigned the more static skilled work, crafting or carving, but he has no artistic talent to speak of and not enough dexterity in his hands for anything other than manual labor and hand signs. 

Besides most of the resources are common, with plenty of other places to find them.

The only thing that would be a hassle to find a new source of would be the salts. Only a few caves have the striated rocks that could be used to treat fabrics and leather so they don’t catch and burn as quickly. And, he won’t tell Hashirama, but it’s nice to have someone else in the cave with him. It was creepy, completely devoid of Amaterasu’s light, and filled with suffocatingly still air. Madara doesn’t like spending time underground, it’s too similar to the stories of Yomi.

But even if Hashirama knew the resources’ locations, he has no idea how to use or gather them.

Hashirama not knowing how to hunt _might_ be able to be explained if his clan prioritized farming and trading instead of hunting game. But he seems awed at everything Madara does, asking endless questions about what he’s doing, how he’s doing it, and why. Madara answers carefully, making sure he never reveals too much and tries not to think about the implications of Hashirama not knowing these basic things.

_His clan is big enough and rich enough that they have a civilian population._

Madara knows seven clans in Fire Country that could claim to have a true civilian population. The Ootora to the west, the Ura, Hagoromo, Senju, and Hishimi in the central, the Miyata to the north, and the Uzumaki to the east.

Hashirama has to belong to one of them, most likely one of the central four and, with the exception of the Hagoromo, all are ancient clan enemies.

Madara tries not to think about it.

Despite meeting for months, Madara has been able to hide anything too distinctly _Uchiha_ from Hashirama _._ But then, on one of the hottest summer days, he makes a mistake.

Madara runs towards the river, a basket full of wire traps on his back and bentos in hand. It’s a blisteringly hot day. He’s sweating as he jumps from branch to branch, even under the shade of the canopy. No matter how many times he wipes at his face or pulls at his clothes, the heat and sweat don’t lessen and the humidity threatens to choke him. Madara blames it on the Fire Country climate and thinks nothing of it until a flash of heat pulses in his chest and he stumbles, careening off the branch.

Madara catches himself at the last minute, whipping out a kunai and digging it into the tree bark. He jerks to a stop, breathing heavily with the bentos clutched to his chest in a death grip. That’s…not normal. It’s then that Madara looks up and sees the smoking scorch marks on the branch above him. He looks down, intending to check his geta but, between his fidgeting and the tumble his obi has loosened, his yukata slipping off one shoulder. His sternum is a bright, scalding red with thick scarlet streaks branching off to follow the chakra pathways in his chest and throat.

With rising dread Madara pulls the kunai from the tree and drops to the ground. He raises his hand and pushes a small, _small_ amount of chakra into his palm. The red on his sternum deepens, the angry lines crawling along the pale skin of his forearm and wrist. Madara realizes a little too late that his guess was right. He tries to cut off the chakra but what is usually an instant, easy process suddenly isn’t. A column of flame bursts from his hand and Madara panics.

He squeezes his hand closed and forcibly pulls the chakra back. His body screams, _too much, too much,_ and another flash of heat pulses from his chest, causing him to fall to his knees, his vision whitening out.

Of course, it had to be chakra overflow, a severe case at that.

_Curse that stupid daimyo, the Sarutobi, and the Hagoromo too. This is all their fault._

Chakra overflow is a common problem among the Uchiha, but Madara’s is admittedly…worrisome. It’s usually not difficult to manage. During the winter months, especially in the Land of Iron, excess heat and chakra were siphoned off to keep him warm. Unlike Izuna, he didn’t have to bundle up in thick furs and hides in the freezing winter months to keep warm. In the far north’s summer months casual flicker performances and their usual katon filled battles were enough to balance his chakra so it didn’t build and build, silently overwhelming the capacity of his reserves until it forcibly burned its way out.

But here, in the sweltering Fire Country summer, when Madara purposefully let his chakra reserves build up over the last two weeks because they were _supposed_ to fight the Sarutobi last week…

But then the daimyo refused to pay them.

“Our payment?” Tajima had asked, Meirou and Madara on either side of him as he finalized their contract.

“A chance to sate your bloodlust,” the daimyo grinned. He wasn’t grinning when Tajima asked a second time. He wasn’t making _any_ expression when Tajima cut his head off for the repeated insult.

They left, no money, no battle.

But Madara should have been paying more attention to his chakra, he should have felt the symptoms and realized it wasn’t just the heated climate before it the overflow reached this stage. But he’d only had the severe symptoms described to him, not felt them before. Overflow affected every Uchiha but it was only a serious condition for the clan’s katon specialists, something that neither Father nor Izuna were. Mother was the one who would have known, who would have been watching and taught him how to keep a steady balance because overflow could progress quickly and without warning, especially in hot, humid climates.

Madara has to fix this, now. The simplest and quickest solution would be to bleed the fire out, however that was far from the easiest. He knew the theory, to use the corresponding hand signs and open every pore of his body to release chakra, utilizing his skin as a conduit for the katon instead of his breath. It was Mother’s technique, the one that inspired her epithet.

It was also a forbidden jutsu.

If used incorrectly, the fire would burn straight through the chakra pathways and coils trying to escape out of the skin, killing the user.

Of course, Madara knew other, safer techniques. Fasting, along with slow continuous use of Fire Stream and being intermittently dunked in freezing cold water would balance his chakra in a day or two…hopefully.

Besides the threat of death, the sheer length of time required to balance severe overflow was why it was dangerous. Even now, stories of Mother’s legendarily long attempts to balance her chakra before she developed the Phoenix Form are still told around the bonfire. The stories are humorous anecdotes, the time she took up residence on a mountain on the edge of Wind Country for a week and became a local legend, the time she got drunk and boiled all the water away in a spring in Steam Country and then tried for hours to perform a _suiton_ to refill it. They’re fun stories, but they weren’t amusing at the time. Losing the strongest ninjutsu users for any time is a risk to the clan.

Madara needs to turn back towards the compound.

But…he’s supposed to meet Hashirama.

Madara pushes himself up and takes a few unsteady steps. The Uchiha were supposed to fight last week so Madara made sure to tell Hashirama not to expect him. If he didn’t show up today Hashirama would think he’s dead. That’s always the first assumption in their world.

It was only a couple of months ago that he lost his brother and Madara remembers how crushed Hashirama was. To let him think Madara is dead…it would be cruel. Hashirama might not return to the river if he thought Madara was gone. If he didn’t, Madara might never see him again. But fire is crawling through his veins, threatening to burn its way out if he ignores it much longer. Death from overflow isn’t uncommon and it’s supposed to be an extremely painful, if fast, way to die.

 _Use the water like last time. Cool off just enough to stop the worst symptoms, tell Hashirama you’re sick, then leave._ Madara decides and continues towards the river, this time slowly and on foot. The heat is more oppressive than ever, sweat starting to hiss and evaporate from his skin even as it rolls down his cheeks.

Madara doesn’t dare mold chakra to reach out with his sensor abilities in his current state. Instead, he purposefully walks further south towards a deeper, colder bend of the river than he and Hashirama usually meet at.

Here, large rocks rise up from the riverbed, splitting the current while further south the landscape changes and slowly rises to make cliffs. Madara steps out onto the rocky bank and pulls his yukata and geta off, carefully setting the wrapped bentos on top. He doesn’t even think of getting sunkissed in his current state, his head too fuzzy and full with heat.

It’s a relief to walk into the icy water, the edge of the overflow symptoms immediately dulled by its freezing touch. Madara wades further in, ignoring how the water bubbles and boils as it laps at his skin.

He dunks his head underwater and paddles forward until he can lean against one of the large rocks. In its shadow, the current is only a gentle tug, it doesn’t threaten to drag him along.

 _Ten minutes. Ten minutes and then head upstream._ Hashirama usually arrived first, he should be at their spot. Madara sinks in the water, letting it lap as high as his chin. Should he try using a small katon? Nothing big like Fire Stream or Fireball, but maybe something like Flicker just to release the worst of the build-up…

But there’s no telling how Flicker would react, Madara reluctantly admits. Even with mild overflow symptoms it wasn’t used. Flicker was good for its namesake performances that taught the Uchiha finite control of their katons, not releasing the overabundance of fire in his veins. The chakra wanted out and using something too small might blow up in his face, literally.

Madara doesn’t have long to think about it, because he hears the scuffle of sandals on rock.

“Madara!” calls Hashirama’s relieved voice.

 _Why? Why is he so far downstream? Does he usually come this way?_ Madara has just enough time to hold his breath and sink until only his eyes are visible. Hopefully between that and the dark hair plastered across his forehead the red lines on his face are obscured. The absolute worst of the overflow has eased, the water around him isn’t boiling, just steaming, but the very obvious _signs_ are still present.

“Why are you in the water? Are you having another…uh… _episode_?” Hashirama asks, coming to stand next to the water’s edge.

Madara grumbles and a small burst of bubbles rises to the surface. He’s not entirely _wrong_ but the comparison is like a candle to a forest fire. And then Hashirama molds chakra and steps out onto the water’s surface. Madara feels a strong wave of dread crash over him.

Hashirama can’t find out. He _can’t._

Madara raises his head up ever so slightly to speak.

“I…I don’t feel good. I’m going to go home, I’ll see you next week—” Madara races to get the words out but half of them are incomprehensible with his mouth dipping below the waterline.

“You _do_ look really red,” Hashirama crouches and reaches out towards him. Madara can’t shove him away, the red lines on his arms and chest will be visible. He does the only thing he can think of and ducks completely underwater. The resulting wave disrupts Hashirama’s balance and chakra control, sending him into the water.

He thrashes and sputters, arms flailing and nearly whacking Madara’s shoulder.

 _What is he doing?_ Madara squints through the murky water and twists until his foot connects with Hashirama’s back and pushes him towards the bank. The other boy finally finds his footing and his head breaks the surface. Madara paddles away towards the deeper middle and rises until only his eyes are visible above water again.

Hashirama is standing, water up to his chest, weird white clothes completely drenched. His hands are on his hips and he’s making an exaggerated gagging face.

“Ew! The water’s warm! Why didn’t you tell me you were peeing? Is this because I made fun of your _thing_ the week before last…”

For a few seconds, Madara’s mind goes blank and he’s stunned speechless.

He thinks…

This _idiot_ thinks…

“Why would I pee in the river while _I’m_ in the river?!” Madara shrieks. “And stop calling it a _thing_ , it’s completely normal unlike your weird mood swings! Those are a _thing_ …”

Madara trails off when he sees Hashirama’s face. He’s not teasing or gloomy like Madara expected, instead his brown face is usually pale, his eyes wide and horrified.

“Your face…your _chest_.” Madara freezes and realizes he pushed himself further out of the water while yelling, and now Hashirama can see the red lines. “Madara something’s wrong, really wrong. I don’t know what it is, but I can help.” He wades further into the water until it’s up to his chin, but he still can’t quite reach Madara’s frozen form.

 _He saw. He saw them._ But Hashirama doesn’t _recognize_ the overflow signs, he doesn’t know what they mean. Madara always assumed the other clans with strong affinities had something similar. Surely earth or water chakra would build until the lines appeared on the others’ forms. Izuna had… _odd_ overflow symptoms, much rarer than Madara’s own, but he still _got them_ if he let his chakra build. Luckily his were tempered by a basic raiton and a few lightning sparks. It barely took him an hour to balance it.

“Just…forget about it,” Madara sinks down to his chin.

“No! You’re sick and I’m going to help!” It’s hard to see but Madara thinks Hashirama straightens and puffs his chest out under the water. “But, um, I can’t swim.” Hashirama says before _purposefully_ flopping into deeper water where his feet won’t touch and reaching out towards Madara.

Madara reacts.

He moves forward and grabs ahold of Hashirama’s wrist, hauling him closer before the current can tug him downstream and drown him because of course this idiot jumps in a river when he doesn’t know how to swim!

Hashirama grins, it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but he knows he’s won. Madara did exactly what he wanted and neither of them can pretend otherwise.

“It’s fine, just let me go back,” Madara says and tries to put as much distance between them as he can while making sure Hashirama’s face stays above water.

“No, not before I help! I’ll heal you,” Hashirama says as Madara begins tugging them out of the deep center, back towards the shallow bank.

Madara can’t help but roll his eyes. “It’s not something you can just _heal._ ” That’s not how overflow works and it’s not like Hashirama has any medicine on him anyway.

“I can! I’m…I’m a mednin,” Hashirama says quickly, finding his footing in the shallow water. Before Madara can pull away or process the fact _Hashirama,_ with his weird hair and clothes, complete lack of basic survival skills, and infuriating personality is a _mednin_ , the boy in question is suddenly gripping Madara’s wrist, instead of the other way around. Hashirama splashes through the water and yanks Madara forcefully along behind him until it’s barely up to their waists.

It’s then that Madara’s common sense returns. He shoves the thoughts, _it’s not fair that Hashirama’s a mednin, he shouldn’t be that cool,_ and, _is healing like a clan technique? Would Hashirama show him if he asked?_ and then the final, _he’s friends with a_ mednin, _Izuna is going to be so jealous,_ forcibly away.

The thoughts don’t matter because Madara can practically see their fragile peace cracking in front of his eyes. Hashirama will figure it out. The overflow symptoms are unmistakable up close. Combined with every other distinctly _Uchiha_ thing, Hashirama won’t be able to ignore the obvious. Madara struggles, tries to pull away. He doesn’t want to fight Hashirama, he doesn’t want to kill him.

But Hashirama doesn’t let him go and now the water is up to their ankles.

“Let go of me! I’m _fine.”_

“No you’re not! There are those _lines_ and I can feel you burning up,” Hashirama shakes Madara’s wrist, the other boy’s freezing cold hand is clasped painfully strong, “you have a fever, a high one, are probably delusional, and that’s not even starting on whatever enemy jutsu is affecting you,” Hashirama says. Madara feels a split second of relief, _he thinks it’s an enemy jutsu,_ before Hashirama’s other hand, covered in green chakra, slaps down on his forehead.

A rush of cool chakra soothes the overflow symptoms.

Madara slumps and can’t stop himself from sinking into blissful relief.

**Hashirama**

Madara is burning.

He’s actually, genuinely _, burning_ and Hashirama has no idea how he’s not dead. He knows it’s from an unnatural source because the water close to Madara wasn’t just warm, it was near _boiling_. Directly touching Madara’s skin causes blisters to bubble up on his fingers and palms but Hashirama refuses to let go.

From the moment he saw the red lines creeping along Madara’s chakra pathways, a deep feeling of dread overcame him. The trees’ whispers grew louder, sounded _concerned_ and Hashirama knew he had to do something. Usually the trees didn’t care about other humans. They whispered to Hashirama and Hashirama alone, despite his inability to understand them. After a few weeks of meeting with Madara, following him around and questioningly him endlessly as he did low-born chores, Hashirama realized the trees noticed the other boy. If they were on Madara’s ‘side’ of the river, sometimes Hashirama got the distinct impression the trees were _fond_ of Madara. On Hashirama’s side, the trees quieted whenever he passed by only to mutter when he was gone. But they _noticed_ him, and now their voices grew louder and louder from both sides, encouraging Hashirama to act.

Hashirama is a natural healer. It’s always been instinctual. He couldn’t always recognize when someone was sick or injured but once he started to heal them, he…he knew _how_ to heal them.

Not always perfectly. The healer women watched him with critical eyes and harsh commands to do _better_ when they snuck him into the Senju infirmaries with patients so sick that Hashirama’s presence, a _boy’s_ presence, the _clan heir’s_ presence, could be easily dismissed as the delusions of the dying.

Because that’s what they were.

Dying.

Hashirama learned very quickly that shinobi were human. They were not gods like the Rikudou.

If the shinobi didn’t die from hemorrhaging wounds, the fever and infection would take them. Even the Senju, with all their wealth, had a poor, inadequate infirmary that did little more than act as a place to shinobi to die. Hashirama would fight and rage, pushing as much of his own chakra into the weak bodies as he could, but the fever was insidious and he was only human.

Touching Madara’s unnaturally hot wrist feels like laying his hand on the forehead of a shinobi marked to die. He’s burning up and Hashirama doesn’t know how he can even swim or speak. It has to be the effect of the strange jutsu, but Hashirama has never seen, never heard, never even _read_ about a jutsu that effects the chakra pathways and can cause a fever of _this_ caliber.

 _Does Madara have a fire affinity?_ It might give him some minimal resistance to the heat, but not a lot. Not enough for _this._

Hashirama ignores the thought that the Neurno are a yin-based clan, not fire. He ignores the thought that humans can’t survive past a certain temperature and Madara seems _long_ past that point.

But it doesn’t matter, Hashirama thinks as Madara protests and tries to pull away. It doesn’t matter because he won’t let Madara die, he _won’t._ Even if Madara thinks less of him for healing, he’s going to save him. No matter what.

“Let go of me! I’m _fine.”_ Maybe he _is_ delusional…

“No you’re not! There are those _lines_ and I can feel you burning up,” Hashirama shakes Madara’s wrist, his palm is screaming from the burns and steady pain but he won’t let go, “you have a fever, a high one, are probably delusional, and that’s not even starting on whatever enemy jutsu is affecting you.” It might not even be a jutsu, but a seal or poison. Hashirama doesn’t _know._ And he won’t until uses medical ninjutsu.

That thought in mind, he turns towards Madara, gathers chakra in his hand, and slaps it on the boy’s burning forehead.

When the women first brought Hashirama to the dying ward, they warned him how healing others would affect him. Healing was an intimate thing. To push your chakra into the body of another to mend and seal wounds wasn’t a cold, impersonal process. You learned things about the people you healed, whether you wanted to or not.

Hashirama sets his palm on Madara’s forehead and intends to do a simple diagnostic jutsu, just to understand what was happening.

He pushes his chakra into Madara’s skin. But instead of the familiar chakra pathways and sense of the body he’s healing, all Hashirama feels is fire.

His palm burns where it touches Madara’s skin, but Hashirama can’t escape the feeling of being surrounded by flames where he expected chakra. After all, despite any affinity, chakra starts at a pure neutral state. It has to be formed into fire, water, yin or yang chakra. When healing a person, he can determine if they have an affinity, there are certain patterns and sensations but…not like this.

Tobirama has a strong water affinity and his neutral chakra does have a distinct fluidity that Hashirama can sense when he heals him. But he would never mistake that chakra impression with actual water.

But this…it’s…it’s really _fire_. He’s never felt such a strong fire affinity before.

Hashirama pushes more medical chakra between their skin. It’s…strange. Very strange. _Is it…a kekkei genkai?_ It doesn’t make sense but …Hashirama doesn’t know a seal, jutsu, or poison in the world that could alter someone’s neutral chakra in such a way. He didn’t even know such a thing was _possible._ And the more he probes he realizes he can’t find anything foreign or _wrong_ in Madara’s strange burning chakra.

There’s no sign of outside influence but… _something’s_ not right. Madara said he didn’t feel well, and this _wasn’t_ normal for him! Hashirama would have noticed before now! He spreads the healing chakra outward, but aside from bruises, several small cuts, and a half-healed deep laceration on his shoulder Madara has no physical wounds. Hashirama heals them all mindlessly and refocuses on the burning chakra.

 _It’s…almost like there’s too much of it._ The more he felt, the more it seemed like the pathways were irritated, about to burst. _Is that even possible?_ If Madara’s chakra reserves were full…that shouldn’t a problem. How could his body produce _too much_ chakra? No one had too much, it was a life source that replenished naturally.

But even as he has the thought, Hashirama thinks of the mokuton. He could maybe, theoretically, absorb so much of the plants’ chakra into his body that it could overwhelm his reserves. Hashirama’s reserves were unusually large because of his lineage, but they took a long time to replenish. He drew on the plants’ chakra to supplement his own if he was low, he could take in chakra from an outside source.

So maybe Madara is…the opposite of him?

Hashirama doesn’t know what he’s about to do. Doesn’t know if it’ll work but…it’s _something._ Madara has been unusually compliant through the entire process and while calm patients were usually better than writhing, fighting ones, the sheer lack of protest after he tried so hard to get away is concerning.

_Just…siphon some of the chakra away._

Easier said than done.

Hashirama has no idea where to begin, no idea what medical jutsu is appropriate. An overabundance of chakra has never been a problem and he still isn’t certain that it is the problem! He’ll just…do it the old way. Before Hashirama started going with the Senju healers and learning specific jutsu to use, he’d always just flooded his patient’s body full of chakra and then focused on whatever he needed to heal.

The women chastised that method. It required an obscene amount of chakra and still resulted in most of it wasted. Better for him to use specific jutsu for any individual task. If he needed to replenish blood, to numb specific body parts, to mend internal rips and tears, there were specifically named jutsu. 

_There’s no jutsu for this._ Hashirama thinks and pushes more medical chakra into Madara. He keeps a careful eye on the boy’s chakra pathways. If his symptoms are from too much chakra, Hashirama adding his own might do more harm than good.

But Madara only lets out a small sigh of relief and slumps forward. The red lines and heat don’t disappear and Hashirama still has to heal his own hands over and over to keep going but at least Madara looks more comfortable.

Hashirama isn’t really sure what to do next. Floundering, instead of pushing more medical chakra into Madara’s skin, he tries to focus on the fire and pulling it out.

For a long moment nothing happens despite his best efforts. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and, Sage above, he doesn’t want to accidently hurt Madara in the process. Finally, _finally_ something happens and the fire chakra starts to trickle out.

_Wait, where’s it going to go?_

_Oh no…_

Hashirama barely has time to brace himself before the fire floods _his_ veins.

 _Too fast, too fast._ Hashirama grits his teeth and closes his eyes at the onslaught. He doesn’t even know if he’s helping Madara, it takes all of his focus to keep standing. He’s burning, he’s burning, he’s _burning._ How could Madara stand this?!

_Too much. It’s too much._

Hashirama starts to shake and he wants to laugh when he forces his eyes back open and sees the same red lines on his own arms.

The chakra keeps coming. It doesn’t stop and he doesn’t know how to make it stop.

_~~Take. Consume. **Bloom.**~~ _

A thought that is _not_ Hashirama’s echoes unbearably loud in his head and the trees start to _wail._

 _Stop it. Stop it!_ He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants Madara to be okay and all of this to end.

“Hashi…” The connection breaks, Madara pulls Hashirama’s hands away and he nearly collapses. The second of relief is cut short by the _burning_ still racing through him. But it gave him a moment of clarity and it’s an unknown instinct that has Hashirama slamming his foot down on the ground and pushing all of that chakra _out._

For a brief moment he worries that the fire will manifest as exactly that, _fire._ But as it pours out of Hashirama, to his relief, he feels the mokuton wake, the plants’ well of chakra reach out and pull the fire from him until it’s smothered and transformed into the familiar blend of earth and water.

A verifiable _explosion_ of plant life bursts up from the ground. Vines and trees, smaller bushes and flowers. The riverbed is wrecked under the force, both boys thrown off their feet and back into the deeper water as the earth shudders and splits apart.

Hashirama groans and flounders, trying to stand before he breathes in a lungful of muddy river water. His feet just barely touch the bottom, hard gravel and slimy mud dig their way into his sandals and squelch uncomfortably between his toes. He’s exhausted. More tired than he can remember being since…since Kawarama. But where that was emotional exhaustion, this is purely physical. But as he hops and twists back to the bank, hoping the current doesn’t drag him under, he realizes he succeeded. The red lines are gone from his arms, the feeling of being seconds away from being set aflame no longer rushes through him. He turns to look at his side and sees a grumpy Madara picking twigs from his hair, similarly free of red lines.

 _It…it worked._ Now Hashirama doesn’t bother holding back his tears as he throws himself towards his friend. He wraps his arms around Madara and almost topples them back into the water. He’s warm, still running a fever but now Hashirama can actually touch him without burns forming on his skin. Though…considering his chakra…Hashirama wonders if this is a lingering effect or his body temperature is just naturally _disturbingly_ high.

Hashirama hugs him tight and he can feel the faint hesitation before Madara raises his own arms. Like always Hashirama freezes, wonders if this is the time the dream ends and he’s pushed away. _Not now. Please not now. Not after…that._ He clings tighter and can’t help his shuddering breath of relief when Madara finally hugs him back.

**Madara**

He should kill Hashirama.

He should…but he doesn’t. Instead Madara hugs his crying friend, confused because for the love of the burning sun, Madara has no idea what just happened. First Hashirama was a _med-nin,_ which is still unfair and the coolest thing _ever_ , but then his hair-brained scheme actually worked? And he somehow…absorbed all of Madara’s overflow chakra, doing in minutes what usually took hours if not _days_ and then did… _that_.

Madara glances at _that_ , a mini-forest filled with suddenly full-grown trees, man-sized vines, and gods only knew how many smaller plants. None of that had been there before. The river had to _shift,_ partially _redirect_ to accommodate all of it on what had previously been rocky bank. The river they’re standing in is more mud than water now.

_What kind of jutsu is that?_

Something uncomfortable and tight curls in Madara’s stomach.

 _A threat. It’s a threat to the Uchiha._ A voice that sounds like Father’s whispers in his ear.

Madara knows what he should do. What would be expected of him. Threats, of any kind, are eliminated without question. The clan’s safety, the family’s safety, comes before all else.

“Madara? Are you okay?” Hashirama’s voice is muffled and hoarse.

 _He still doesn’t know._ Madara doesn’t…he doesn’t know _how_ Hashirama still hasn’t realized the obvious but Madara will cling to that thought. He doesn’t know Madara is an Uchiha and Madara doesn’t recognize his strange jutsu. If Hashirama really was an immediate threat, Father would know and would have told him.

And…and Hashirama actually _helped_ him. Madara feels _great_. Hashirama healed Izuna’s lucky hit on his shoulder that had been taking _ages_ to heal and every other small cut or bruise on him. Madara doesn’t remember the last time he was actually fully, completely injurty-free. Plus, no more overflow symptoms meant Madara wouldn’t have to isolate himself to balance his chakra. He could continue doing his duties and if there was a sudden battle, he’d be able to fight, thanks to Hashirama.

He doesn’t have to kill Hashirama. He _doesn’t_.

“Y-yeah. What… _how_ …” Madara doesn’t want to press, doesn’t want to upset their peace but…

“Don’t be mad,” Hashirama’s arms tighten around his neck.

“I’m not mad, I’m confused. You…knew overflow could be healed?” Did…did other clans know? Is that why Madara’s never seen even the smallest colored line on another ninjutsu user?

“What’s ‘overflow’?” And there goes that idea.

“You didn’t even know what it was and you still fixed it?!”

“Uhh…yes?” Hashirama must sense his burgeoning impatience because he mercifully continues. “Your chakra pathways just felt…too full, like they were about to burn up. So I…I healed it, absorbed it. And when it was too much, I redirected it into the mokuton and…um…” Hashirama trails off.

 _Mokuton._ Not an affinity Madara has heard of, but the power is there in the sudden burst of flora. Madara can see the potential, can see how it could rip the ground apart and how the vines and trees could be used as cover or maybe even weapons by a skilled user.

Hashirama is a powerful ninja.

The whisper of _threat, threat, threat_ still echoes in his mind but Madara can’t help but think…they could _dance._

It might even be a _challenge_ for him! Of course it’d be a bad idea to use any more ninjutsu. Madara isn’t going to try and push his luck any further. But they could use still use taijutsu and maybe even kenjutsu.

 _And if Hashirama could heal_ _them afterward…_

Madara wouldn’t even have to hold back!

“Why are you smiling like that?” Hashirama asks, pulling back to look down at Madara. Without his geta, Hashirama stands almost three inches taller than him. Madara’s grin widens, ready to announce his challenge, when he actually _sees_ Hashirama. He looks terrible.

His eyes are puffy and red, with unusually deep shadows under them. His brown face is still oddly pale and sallow with patchy red spots on his cheeks. He’s shaking faintly, the tremors reaching up to the arms still wrapped around Madara’s neck, and he’s not sure if it’s from emotion, the rush of chakra, or the freezing muddy water.

It’d be no fun to dance with him in this state.

“Does all healing take this much of a toll, or only because you absorbed my chakra?” Madara asks before he can stop himself. To his surprise Hashirama glances away, his hands absently tracing small nervous circles on the back of Madara’s neck. “If it’s a clan thing you don’t have to answer.”

“It’s not. Um, I think it’s because I absorbed yours and then,” he nods towards the burst of vegetation, “did that. Usually it’s not this bad.” His eyes dart down to meet Madara’s and then look away.

Madara wants to press on, wants to see the healing chakra again but Hashirama looks tired and _embarrassed_ of all things. He bites down on his tongue and looks back towards his clothes and bentos. It’d probably be a good idea to relax and take a break. It’s past lunchtime and if Madara stands under the direct sun any longer he’s going to get sunkissed.

“Come on, let’s eat. Can you walk back across the river?” He hasn’t forgotten about Hashirama’s dumb stunt, the fact that he can’t _swim._ If the sallowness fades after lunch Madara plans on holding him down in the water until he learns to paddle at the very least. Uchiha aren’t _fond_ of water but not knowing how to swim is unacceptable.

“Y-yeah.” Hashirama’s arms drop, but one hand hesitantly curls around Madara’s. He takes it and watches Hashirama’s mouth quirks into a relieved smile before leading him across the water to his discarded things. Madara starts to put on the yukata and grumbles under his breath when he feels his skin stretch and prickle in a telltale sign.

Hashirama notices and snickers. “You already got a sunburn? You’re worse than my brother.”

Madara squints at him. “What’s a sunburn?”

“This,” Hashirama pokes Madara’s red shoulder.

“That’s a sun _kiss_ , idiot.” Madara pulls the fabric on and ties his obi.

“Pretty sure it’s a burn,” Hashirama mutters.

“Just because you’re cool now doesn’t mean you’re right.” He slips his geta on, now once again eye level with Hashirama, and picks up the bentos.

“Wait! You think I’m cool? Since when?” Hashirama latches onto his arm as Madara starts to walk towards the tree line.

“Yes.” _Unfortunately._ “Don’t get a big head.”

“Why? Why do you think I’m cool?” Hashirama asks before stripping off his soaked top. Madara lays the furoshiki out, movements hindered as Hashirama is once again pressed tightly to his side, blinding smile on his face.

“Don’t play dumb, you know why.” Madara sits and drags Hashirama down with him.

“I really, _really_ don’t.” 

Madara scowls and pushes a bento into his stomach. Hashirama huffs and his hands slip from Madara’s arm to grab it.

“You’re a med-nin, alright? It’s cool,” Madara says and slides the wooden top off his own bento. The last of the Sharingan peppers were used for dinner last night, so Hashirama better be extra thankful today because Madara had to make his bento separately and from scratch to make sure they weren’t included. He opens his mouth, ready to demand his thanks, when he hears Hashirama sniffle.

“You…you think…” Hashirama scrubs at the tears rolling down his cheeks, “you don’t think it’s…wrong? Since I’m a boy? You do know I’m a boy, right?”

“Yes, Hashirama, I can see the obvious,” Madara drawls but then the first part of his sentence sinks it. “Wait…‘wrong’? What are you talking about? How is _healing_ wrong? What’s being a boy got to do with anything?”

“Healing is a woman’s art. It’s inappropriate for a boy,” Hashirama whispers, picking at a stray thread on the furoshiki.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Madara snaps up a blackberry from Hashirama’s bento. He takes a piece from his own and then thrusts his box towards Hashirama. Inside he’s steaming. Because Hashirama’s clan’s messed up rule implies that they had _so_ many med-nins they could make up all the stupid rules they wanted. The Uchiha have two. In the entire clan, only two who could infuse weak medical ninjutsu.

Hashirama stares at the blanket, refusing to look up even as he hesitantly takes a berry from Madara’s bento. His shoulders are pulled up to his ears and Madara can see the wet spots from his tears as they drip onto the cloth.

_He didn’t make the dumb rule._

Madara scowls and takes a deep breath.

“I want to be a med-nin, but I…I can’t.” Madara admits. The Uchiha were warriors, not healers. Amaterasu’s blessing, the tengu’s love, Ai’s legacy…it was one of power. Coupled with Indra’s origin and the creation of the sharingan…the Uchiha weren’t just _not inclined_ towards medical ninjutsu, they were all but incapable of using it.

Madara could cut down and kill his enemies but he couldn’t save those he loved most.

If he was a med-nin, he could have healed Mother before she gave her life to save his.

If he was a med-nin, he could have healed more of their experienced injured shinobi and Yuuto and Reo wouldn’t have been caught unaware and killed in that Senju ambush. _~~Don’t think about what those bastards took from their bodies.~~_ ~~~~

If he was a med-nin, he could have healed Kaito from the sickness that his starved body was too weak to fight off.

If he was a med-nin, he could have saved his more family’s lives. Naori’s sister, Hikaku’s aunt, Kiyoko’s twin, Ichiro’s two older brothers, Takeshi and Kimi’s mother, and so many others. After the twins died Madara tried, he tried so hard but he couldn’t shape his chakra into anything but fire. Father had to drag him away from the healing yurt after days of fruitless practice, when he’d refused to eat or sleep. In the end he was forbidden from seeing the med-nins for months.

“Stop this, Madara, you’ll drive yourself to madness. We are not med-nin, healing is not in our blood. The only way we can save others is through power. Become powerful enough that no enemy, no threat can stand against you. This is our way.” Father held him as he cried and raged, refused to let him go until Madara succumbed to his exhaustion.

“R-really? _You_ …you want to be…” Hashirama glances up through tear-stained lashes.

“I said it, didn’t I? You can…you can _heal people_ , Hashirama. When your family get hurts you can actually do something, you can help. That’s…that’s just…” Madara can’t find the right words. The feeling of awe bubbles up, tinged with bitter envy and he just can’t _express_ it. With an aggravated huff, he turns towards Hashirama and grabs the other boy’s hands.

One of the bone chopsticks falls to the furoshiki as Madara tugs him closer and leans in. Their noses bump and Madara is close enough to see odd golden flecks in Hashirama’s brown eyes. He gets distracted for a moment, it’s _weird_ to see Hashirama’s pupils expand and contract, to see the odd grooves of color instead of the flat, endless black of Uchiha eyes. 

_Focus!_

“Listen to me. Healing is cool. It’s amazing. _You’re_ amazing,” Madara practically snarls, because Hashirama _needs_ to get this through his thick head. “I don’t care what your stupid clan says. It’s a good thing and _you_ should be proud of it. Do you understand?!”

Fat tears well up in Hashirama’s eyes and spill over his cheeks but he offers Madara a wide, wobbly smile. His hands tighten around Madara’s and that’s the only warning he gets before Hashirama is tackling him to the blanket. Madara’s first thought is for the half-eaten food, but Hashirama hasn’t completely lost his mind and chose to angle his pounce so it doesn’t spill.

Madara glances longingly at his onigiri as he reaches up to run his hand along Hashirama’s bare skin. The other boy is a cold, heavy weight on top of him, sobbing into his neck with his fists clenched in Madara’s yukata.

“D-do you want me…I…I could heal your sunburn,” Hashirama mumbles into the side of Madara’s neck when his tears dry up. “I-if you want me to. Calling it a _kiss_ kinda sounds like it’s supposed to be a good thing, but Tob—er, my brother always complains when he gets them, but he complains about them in his own way which is a lot of scowling and not saying what’s actually bothering him—”

“Hashirama,” Madara interrupts because he’s starting to ramble and Madara can barely understand him. “It’s fine. You can heal it.” The kisses, while a nice reminder of Amaterasu’s favor, were…inconvenient. And if it meant Hashirama would actually show him the technique…if Madara got the chance to sense medical chakra without the haze of overflow…it was more than worth it.

“Really?” Hashirama sits up, straddling Madara’s waist. Before he can respond, Hashirama is tumbling ungracefully off, pulling Madara up into a sitting position and then tugging down the collar of his yukata.

“What—let me do it myself! I’m not an infant!” Madara shoves him away. He doesn’t take the yukata completely off, merely loosens the obi until the fabric pools around his waist. “Now show me!”

“You’re so bossy,” Hashirama says but he’s grinning as he raises his hand. Madara reaches out to sense as his hand is engulfed in a bright green light. It feels like all of Hashirama’s chakra does. Oddly reminiscent of the background nature readings but with a deep, all-encompassing sturdy presence like being surrounded by the oldest redwood growth that stretches on and on. Madara’s eyes dart towards the mini-forest. The mokuton definitely explains _that_ association. While his chakra still feels strange compared to the familiar Uchiha signatures it’s a…nice strange. There’s something comforting in it, made more so by how thick and saturated the medical chakra feels.

Without thinking, Madara reaches out to touch his hand. Medical chakra seeps into his fingers and palms, pleasantly cool as he turns Hashirama’s hand this way and that. They have the same callouses but Hashirama has considerably fewer scars. Madara twists until he can line their hands up exactly, his hand in Hashirama’s, and for a moment the green chakra is so bright it looks like it’s gathering on the tips of _his_ fingers.

“I could teach you!” Hashirama blurts out. “Maybe not how to infuse healing chakra, but other stuff. How to make medicines…the right herbs and roots to use, those kinds of things! Unless…you already know all that and it’s a stupid idea,” Hashirama wilts, gloomy expression on his face.

“It’s…it’s not a stupid idea.”

Hashirama…Hashirama would teach him?

Not something fun and silly like stone skipping but _healing_?

The Uchiha healers knew the healing properties of Iron Country’s flora, but not Fire Country’s. There was no room for error to test combinations on their own clansmen and civilian healers refused to sell to them, let alone teach them. Even with henges, they could only buy a little bit here and there with their few, scarce ryo. Medicine was a rare, hoarded thing carefully stocked and replenished every time they went north with desperate prayers to the sun that it wouldn’t run out.

But…but Hashirama would teach him? 

Madara’s eyes burn. Tears well up and spill silently down his cheeks. They drip onto the furoshiki, hissing and burning through the thinnest, worn places in the cloth.

“Uh, Madara?”

“Promise? Promise you’ll teach me?” Using his free hand, Madara roughly rubs the tears from his face. Naori would make fun of him if he ruined another blanket and she had to stitch it back together.

“I promise.”

“Thank you.” His throat is too tight to say anything else, so Madara squeezes Hashirama’s hand and hopes he understands.

“You’re welcome!” He squeezes back. “Oh! I’ll show you where a patch of aloe vera grows, it’s really good for sunburns, err sunkisses. And I created an ointment for my brother to protect his skin, I’ll show you how to make that too.” Hashirama babbles on, mostly talking to himself as he raises his other hand, infuses healing chakra, and lays it across Madara’s shoulder.

Cool chakra seeps into his skin and Madara fights not to collapse in a boneless heap. The effect on him is the same, even without the scorching overflow.

“There, all better! Now I can show you the ointment,” Hashirama moves back and reaches for his abandoned obi. Hidden in the folds is a small belt Madara hasn’t seen before with rows of tiny, talon sized pouches.

“After we finish eating, the food is going to dry out,” Madara pulls on his yukata but doesn’t bother to tie it shut. He picks up his half-eaten bento and nudges Hashirama until the other boy does the same and keeps eating. Once they finish and the bentos and chopsticks are set aside, Hashirama fiddles with the belt and pull out a few seeds from individual pouches.

“Uh, I gotta use the mokuton. The seeds are kind of useless like this. I won’t do anything but make them grow and make a bowl,” Hashirama promises and Madara reluctantly agrees. He watches the other boy dig small holes and bury the seeds then clasp his hands together in one simple hand sign and press them to the ground.

Madara is expecting it, but it still shocks him to see the dirt move and shake as tendrils reach up. The four plants grow rapidly, sprouting, flowering, blooming. By Hashirama’s side a burst of pure wood erupts from the ground, forming into a warped misshapen bowl. He’s trembling slightly by the end, still not fully recovered from the first time he used his jutsu. But still…

 _Can he make any seed grow? Even in the winter?_ If he could and that power was trained…Madara can only imagine how much _food_ Hashirama could grow.

 _He’s too old to take. He’s too old to take. He’s too old to take._ Madara repeats to himself, but it’s just not _fair._ How can Hashirama have two of the coolest and best ninjutsu? One of which Madara didn’t even know _existed_ until now.

“Do you carry the seeds around all the time?” Madara asks as Hashirama pulls the misshapen bowl in front of him and starts to pluck dark, fist-sized nuts from one of the stouter plants.

“Yep! I can’t grow stuff that isn’t vines or wood without them. Now look at these. This one is shiyiri,” Hashirama holds up the nut, “that one is copra,” a spiky bush with hard wrinkled berries, “that one is calamin,” a tall plant with oval leaves and clumps of white berries, “and finally the aloe vera I was talking about.” Hashirama points to a spiky green plant with no visible nuts or berries.

“What do all of them do?” Madara asks, watching Hashirama struggle to crack the shiyiri nut open.

“Uh, um…” Hashirama trails off, tongue between his teeth as his weird pale nails scrabble at the outer shell.

“Just give it to me,” Madara thrusts his hand out.

“No. I can do—ow!” He drops the shiyiri as blood wells up from a split nail.

Hashirama clutches his hand close to his chest and Madara picks up the nut.

“You were saying?” Madara smirks as he digs a talon into the shell and twists. The nut pops open to reveal a smooth, creamy white substance inside.

Hashirama pouts, even as healing chakra coats his injured hand and he swipes the nut from Madara. He scoops out the buttery substance and drops it in the bowl.

“ _Anyway._ The shiyiri is a moisturizer, it’s used so the others can be absorbed the skin. The calamin is what actually protects the skin, it’s also good for bug bites or irritated skin. The copra helps the calamin and binds everything so you don’t sweat the ointment off. It’s edible,” Hashirama barely finishes the word before Madara reaches out to pluck a clump from the bush and pop them in his mouth, “but they’re incredibly bitter.”

Madara rolls his eyes at that. _Incredibly_ is a strong word, the copra berries don’t come anywhere close to bitter melons or lemon peels. They have a weird texture, oddly hard and chewy for berries but they’re not bad. He wants another.

“Don’t eat them all!” Hashirama admonishes and when Madara reaches for more and Hashirama knocks his hand away. Madara eyes the berries until Hashirama pushes another shiyiri into his hands. While he digs his talon into the shell, Hashirama pulls clumps of calamin and copra berries and crushes them to pulp before adding them to the bowl. He takes the second shiyiri from Madara and pulls off a spiky leaf from the aloe vera. Madara watches in interest as _jelly_ is squeezed out of it.

“You can also eat aloe vera,” Hashirama says and then immediately blocks Madara as he reaches towards the spiky plant, “it’s good for heartburn _but_ it’s also a laxative.” Madara grumbles under his breath and lowers his hands.

He leans back and watches Hashirama mix everything together with his hands.

“I wish I brought paper and ink so you could write it down and not forget.” Ink instead of charcoal, Hashirama really _is_ rich.

“I’m not going to forget,” Madara scoffs. “You showed me the plants, of course I’ll remember.”

“Really? You don’t want to write it down just in case?”

“No, I don’t need to.” Is he supposed going to start writing everything down now? Where is he going to put all the papers? But Hashirama still looks skeptical. “What, like you need to see something more than once to memorize it?”

“Uh, typically.” Hashirama finishes mixing and shows Madara the thick buttery result.

“That’s so inconvenient.” Though it did explain why Hashirama sometimes forgot which game tracks were which when they were hunting and he’d answered right before. Maybe he wasn’t doing it just to frustrate Madara. “Watch. Next week I’ll be able to recall everything perfectly.”

“You wanna bet on it?” Hashirama grins and dips his hand in the ointment.

“Sure. And when I win, we’re going to dance.” Madara says as he wiggles out of his clothes until he’s left only in his fundoshi.

“And when _I_ win, we’re going to skip stones all day next week and _every_ time I make it across you have to call me Lord Hashirama, He Who Is The Master Stone-Skipper,” Hashirama declares before leaning forward to slap Madara’s cheeks and squish them together. Madara seethes at the indignity as Hashirama rubs in the ointment and barely restrains himself from biting the other boy when his hands slip down Madara’s neck to his shoulders. “Also, why are you naked?”

“I’m teaching you how to swim.”

 _He’s definitely recovered enough to learn._ Aside from the attitude, most of the color has returned to Hashirama’s face, even after using the mokuton for the second time.

“Why?” Hashirama gathers more of the cream and spreads it down Madara’s arm.

“Because it’s stupid that you don’t know how,” Madara answers as Hashirama spreads the ointment across his wrist and covers Madara’s hand. He realizes what’s about to happen and tries to close his hand, but doesn’t manage in time. Hashirama drags his hand carelessly over the tips of Madara’s fingers and his talons slice into Hashirama’s palm. The boy yanks his hand away, staring at the blood.

“Again?! Why are your nails so sharp?!” Hashirama pouts as he infuses more healing chakra.

Madara scoffs and drags the misshapen bowl towards him.

“You should have let me do it from the start.” He slathers the cream over his body, quickly rubbing it in. He’s twisting his arms, trying to reach his back when Hashirama scoots closer, hand healed and ready to be a nuisance.

“Come on, you can’t reach your back so let me do it. I won’t sit behind you, I promise.”

“Fine, but make it quick.” If teaching him how to swim is anything like teaching him the flushing call, it’s going to take a while. Despite their practice, Hashirama hasn’t made much progress. Occasionally he’d get the pitch right, but it lacked the power or force to actually scare anything and he went nearly hoarse after doing it once.

Madara turns slightly and Hashirama leans over him to rub the ointment into his skin. He’s working his way down towards the small of Madara’s back when he freezes and Madara hears his sharp inhale.

“Don’t touch it.” He knows what Hashirama’s sees. The long scar, years old, but with the same poison filled lines around it just like the day he got it. And over it, Mother’s searing handprint, warped by age. His first and final burn scar.

“Is…is it healed? The handprint looks awfully red—”

“Don’t talk about it.”

“—and that kind of capillary discoloration is usually a symptom of—”

“I said: _don’t talk about it._ ” Madara pushes him back and scoots away, crossing his arms. The scar is shameful. A reminder of Madara’s mistake and how it killed his mother and should have killed him. And it’d keep being that, no matter what. Even if…no, _when_ he killed the Senju that gave it to him.

The sudden silence is tense. Finally, Hashirama, fidgets and clears his throat. 

“You said…you said you were going to teach me how to swim?”

Madara sighs and the tension slips from his shoulders.

“Yeah, are you going to make more of this for you?” Madara nudges the nearly empty wooden bowl with his foot.

“Nope!” Hashirama grins and whips his hakama off. “I don’t burn!”

 _Of course you don’t, you’re not favored by the goddess._ But Hashirama _did_ say his brother ‘burned’ easily. Did he have a fire affinity? There was no way it was as strong as Madara’s.

Madara stands and leads Hashirama to a spot upstream where the water is still clear of mud and debris. It’s not quite at their usual spot, but close enough that only one or two larger rocks interrupt the river.

“So what do I do? You’re not just going to toss me in, are you?” Hashirama asks, picking up a stone and skipping it across the river.

“Of course not!” Madara smacks his shoulder. “Are you scared of the water?” Madara asks and steps in until the river comes up to his calves.

“Not really, I just don’t know how to swim. And drowning when I could avoid it would be a stupid way to die,” Hashirama says, splashing into the shallows beside him.

“Okay. I’m going to show you how it’s done. Watch my arms and legs, then you’ll do it. I’ll wait downstream and pull you out of the current,” Madara waits until Hashirama agrees and then swims into the deep center. He takes a deep breath and slowly, carefully moves through the water, remembering all of Yua’s lessons when she taught him. After only fifteen seconds or so, he angles away from the current and back towards the shallows. Madara braces his feet on the riverbed, the water lapping at his chest. He waves at Hashirama and watches as the other boy gives him a thumbs up and then splashes into the center.

Hashirama flounders, his arms and legs unsteady and out of sync. But he makes his way down and Madara grabs his arms and hauls him up before the current can catch him. Hashirama coughs, hacking up water as he clings to Madara’s shoulders and tries to stand.

“Don’t breathe in the water,” Madara scolds.

“I couldn’t help it, it went up my nose,” Hashirama pouts. He finds his footing but doesn’t let go of Madara’s shoulders.

“Do I need to show you again?” If Hashirama needed to see something multiple times to memorize it, how many times should Madara show him? Did the number vary by activity or was it always, show it to him five times and he’d learn it?

“No, I got it.”

So…he _can_ memorize things after seeing them only once?

“Then do it again.” Madara pushes Hashirama away and retakes his place.

They practice again and again. Each time Hashirama’s movements even out just a bit more and he _finally_ stops inhaling water. After the fifth circuit, Madara mentally congratulates himself on a job well done. He’s not the strongest swimmer in the clan, but he’s successfully taught Hashirama the basics and at the very least the other boy won’t drown if he falls into a river. A few more sessions and he’d be as good as Madara.

But then, as Hashirama wades into the deeper water for his sixth attempt, he stops, the water licking at his chin.

“Oh,” he says and then dives in, movements now smooth and natural like a fish.

_What?_

Madara stares, flabbergasted, as Hashirama pops up out of the water with a large grin.

“It clicked! I figured it out!” Before Madara can respond the other boy dives back down, now swimming _against_ the current with ease. Madara lingers, unsure if this sudden knowledge is about to disappear and Hashirama will need to be fished out, but the other boy seems fine. He surfaces to take a breath and looks back towards Madara.

“Keep practicing!” Madara yells, before swimming towards one of the large river rocks. He pulls himself up on top of it. The rough, wet surface bites into his feet as he perches at the top, eyes on Hashirama in case the other boy needs help. Under the sun’s bright light his bare skin dries immediately, but Hashirama’s ointment is still working. Madara sits, skin exposed, but without a single sunkiss. It’s almost disconcerting. He’s not sure if he likes it. 

The next hour passes and by the end Madara feels irritated yet strangely proud. He knows, _knows_ Hashirama wasn’t faking being unable to swim. He floundered too much earlier today and even his first few attempts reminded Madara of watching Yua teach Izuna and his age-mates how to swim.

But _now…_

If he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, Madara wouldn’t believe that Hashirama only learned to swim today. He moved too easily, too naturally in the water. The first time he tried swimming on his back, Madara almost jumped in to pull him out, he sunk and started thrashing before he found his feet. But the second time he was gliding downstream, easy as could be. 

Now Madara watches as Hashirama swims up to his rock, surfacing with a bright smile as he shakes water from his hair. Madara grimaces as the drops land on his warm skin.

“Come on, you don’t want to swim? It’s actually really fun.”

Madara’s lip curls. Swimming is many things, ‘fun’ is not one of them.

Hashirama sees his expression and pouts, wrapping his arms around the rock as he treads water. He’s close enough that Madara could kick him and the thought is _very_ tempting.

“No.”

Hashirama sticks his lower lip out.

“No _._ ”

He sniffs, crocodile tears gleaming in his eyes.

“ _No_.”

“Fine. Stay up on your rock, perched like some kind of angry bird.” Hashirama sinks down lower in the water as Madara rolls his eyes. “It’s okay, I understand if you’re too scared to come in.”

_Don’t, he’s just trying to get a reaction—_

“Scared?! I’m not scared! _I_ taught _you_!” Madara bristles, reaching down to kick water at Hashirama. His foot touches the cold water and it’s only then that Madara sees the other boy’s smirk.

_Godsdammit—_

Hashirama grabs his ankle and yanks him off of the rock, into the water. Madara surfaces, hair plastered to his face, obscuring his sight.

“You look like some kind of river demon!” Hashirama laughs, bobbing up and down in the water.

Madara shrieks and lunges at him. Hashirama darts away, keeping to the deeper part of the river so Madara is at a disadvantage. And it becomes very obvious exactly how much of a disadvantage he’s at. Madara is not graceful in the water. He’s old enough and strong enough that there’s not much of a risk of it fully extinguishing his inner fire, but even then he’s never _liked_ it. He keeps himself afloat and cuts through the waves through sheer will and stubbornness.

Madara chases Hashirama but the boy really has become a fish. He twists out of way every time Madara almost has him and seems to know intuitively how to curl every limb in the water and work with and against the current. Madara can’t catch him. But he also can’t escape to the shallow banks or back to his rock. Every time he tries to walk away, Hashirama is there dragging him back with a snicker and gone again before Madara can strangle him.

“What’s wrong, Madara-chan? You look a little mad,” Hashirama smirks, splashing him. 

Madara sees red, he can feel the heat rising in his chest. When he gets his hands on Hashirama…

“Uh, are you okay?” The smirk slides off of Hashirama’s face and his eyes widen in concern. “The water is starting to um, _steam_ —” He drifts closer and Madara sees his chance.

He waits a second more, Hashirama comes ever so closer, and then Madara pounces. He knows it’s childish, he’s already nine, not seven like Izuna but Madara gets his hands around Hashirama’s arm and he can’t help but yank him closer and bite down hard on the meat of his shoulder.

“Ow! Why are you biting me?!” Hashirama yells, trying to push him away. But Madara has been led around and teased until he was boiling with frustration, he’s not letting go. He digs teeth and talons in as Hashirama splashes around in the water. The other boy tugs and pushes, sinks under the water, tries to thrash until he’s forced to let go but Madara refuses.

Finally Hashirama gives up and accepts his fate. He cranes his neck back to stare at Madara. Madara glances up and meets his eye.

“Please let go?” Hashirama smiles sheepishly. Madara bites down harder. “OW! I’m _sorry._ I’m sorry I pulled you off the rock and then swam circles around you—ow! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I was mean!” Satisfied Madara unlocks his jaw and licks blood off his teeth. “Was that really necessary?” Hashirama sulks, gesturing to the bleeding holes in his shoulder.

“You deserved it,” Madara sniffs and releases his arm.

“Who just goes around _biting_ people?” Hashirama grumbles as he lays a glowing green hand on his shoulder then arm.

“Your siblings or age-mates didn’t bite you when you were young?” Honestly that would explain _a lot._ Madara still has a couple of small scars on his arms and legs from Naori and Izuna. And one very prominent one on his elbow from the only time he pushed Hikaku past his limit.

“ _No_. No one bit me when I was little!” Hashirama throws his hands up and sinks in the water.

“You make it very obvious,” Madara scoffs.

“Like that’s a bad thing?!”

Madara rolls his eyes and turns away, what kind of question was that? If Hashirama wanted to swim more, fine, he’s going back to his rock. He can’t stay in the river much longer, he still has the hunting traps to set, but even though Hashirama seems to have found a second home in the water, Madara still feels uncomfortable leaving him alone since he just learned how to swim. But before he can swim away, he feels Hashirama’s hand close around his arm. Madara turns back with a glare, did he not learn his lesson? Madara already bit him once, he’d do it again!

“If you don’t want to swim could we just…float? Together?” Hashirama fidgets in the water.

“Fine. But not for long.” Hashirama’s face lights up and he relaxes easily on his back, letting the water carry him along.

Madara…tries.

He doesn’t float well. He knows _how to_ in theory, but that yields few practical results. Even taking the deepest breath he can, his legs drag him down and he can’t keep on his back for longer than a few seconds.

After several minutes of struggling Hashirama paddles closer to him.

“You’re not good at this.”

“Really, Hashirama? I had no idea,” Madara angrily splashes water at him.

“I’m just _saying._ Let me help! I can carry you.”

“You’ll float with both of us?” Madara is skeptical. He can’t manage it by himself yet Hashirama will do both?

“Yep!” He grins and floats closer until he’s close enough to touch and their legs brush underwater. “Wrap your arms around my neck and tuck your nose against my throat.” Still doubtful, Madara nevertheless reaches up until they’re chest to chest, his arms tightening around Hashirama’s neck as he falls back into the water.

They’re unsteady at first and Madara is sure they’re going to topple and sink into the water.

“Relax, you’re too tense. That’s why you kept sinking,” Hashirama says. Pressed flush against him, Madara can feel how Hashirama relaxes completely, trusting the river to hold him. He’s _serene_ in the water and it’s disgusting. But he’s keeping his balance, so _something_ is working. Madara forces himself to loosen up and match Hashirama’s breathing. His neck is twisted at an almost uncomfortable angle to keep his face out of the water and Hashirama isn’t exactly comfortable to lay on, but they’re doing it. Dipping up and down in the water, but floating.

“See, I told you!” Hashirama laughs and Madara clings tighter as they plunge deeper from the vibrations and cold water sloshes over his belly. Madara won’t admit it out loud but this…isn’t the worst. He’s lined shoulder to hip on top of Hashirama and something feels…different than if it was one of his age-mates or brother. Hashirama is still freezing cold but with the burning sun on his back, his feet and legs dipping into the water, and Hashirama’s cold skin beneath him Madara fully relaxes, his eyes flutter shut.

He tenses a bit when Hashirama’s arms curl around him, but they’re high on his back, nowhere near the scar.

“Sorry. The water’s cold and you’re warm,” Hashirama whispers and squeezes him tight. Madara hums and settles back in place.

All he can hear is their breathing and the river. Just the two of them and nothing else.

It feels like a dream.

“We should probably head back,” Madara eventually says after they’ve been on the water for a while. The sun is starting to dip down in the sky and he’ll be racing to finish the wire traps before it gets too dark to see and he gets too tired to continue.

Hashirama makes a loud noise of complaint and tightens his arms. “I don’t want to go back yet,” he whines before falling silent. Despite Madara’s words, he doesn’t move or get off either. “Hey, Madara?”

“Hn?”

“Thanks for teaching me how to swim. And…and what you said about the healing thing,” Hashirama adds on the last bit quickly.

“Tch, it was less teaching you and more like reintroducing a fish to water,” Madara teases and finally rolls off of Hashirama into the water. It feels like _ice_ on his warm back and he immediately wants back on his floating human sunrock. “But, for what it’s worth,” he grabs Hashirama’s hand underwater and squeezes, “you’re welcome.”

The other boy grins, large and bright, and in the sunlight his brown hair almost looks _red._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I want Uzumaki!Hashirama because of my own uncontrollable associations and Kishimoto's goddamn timeline. In flashback episode 368, we see Hashirama with a battle scroll. Now I know, logically, it probably has nothing to do with the Uzumaki despite them being renowned for sealing. Did that stop my brain from seeing it and deciding battle scroll=Uzumaki, no it did not. So then how did he get the battle scroll? The Senju and Uzumaki may be distantly related but I don't think they'd just give it to him. So then he got it when he married Mito, right? Well, here's the timeline problems. Hashirama *had* to have married Mito young and had a child in order to die in the first shinobi war but still meet his granddaughter. But it's implied his marriage was a political one for the village, or that Mito came to the village to be the jinchuriki. See the problem? Hashirama has the battle scroll in the last fight before the village is founded. Now, I could wave these all away as inconsistencies, but where's the fun in that? 
> 
> So, also keeping in mind the problem of Hashirama and Madara not recognizing one another, my brain decided on this. There was a threat that pushed an (unwanted) political marriage between the Senju and Uzumaki in the previous generation. Now what threat was that? Very simple. Kou. I'll try not to go off the rails but I *cannot* stress enough how terrifying Madara's mother was to fight. In this au fire is a serious threat, it can't just be brushed off. Even for the Uchiha, their katon specialists are *resistant* to fire, not immune. With, of course, three exceptions. Ai, Kou, and Madara. Before Madara, Kou was the scourge of the land, the most demonic and terrifying of the Uchiha. Fire Country is still populated by mostly fire affinities. Katons became absolutely worthless in a fight against her. She'd blitz through them and break enemy formations. Taijutsu or any close-range combat? I mean you can *try* to hit the woman who's on fire. And if she's not actively on fire, Phoneix Form passively superheats the air so if someone comes within striking distance, they'll still get scalded. Genjutsu? She's an *Uchiha*. Again, this woman was *terrifying*. Enemies of the Senju's daimyo capitalized on it and the Senju got desperate. They came up with 2 plans. 1 Marry/ally a clan with a strong water affinity/some other means to combat Kou. 2 Marry/ally an Uzumaki and use their sealing techniques to seal her chakra. Butsuma was in favor of 1 but his father and the clan elders decided on 2 and married him to Hashirama's mother. I won't say anymore now but that's the basic setup.
> 
> Now for the trees recognizing Madara? Also Tengu mythology. When depicted as guardians, Tengu guarded shrines and/or forests. They were *very* protective of them. Even taking a single leaf from a Tengu's forest could invoke their wrath and there were stories of loggers leaving food offerings to appease them. Now, obvious hashimada analogy aside, Tengu traditionally are not associated with fire. Usually they have wind or storm motifs. For this au, and the fire happy Uchiha, the trees closest to their camps *really* love them. The Uchiha don't cut down trees close to home/practice the biggest katons because it'd reveal their location. And they are very protective of "their" forests just like in the myths. However, trees just far enough away from the Uchiha camps are thinking...oh shit the pyro birds are back. Not as fond.
> 
> And finally, the biting. Parrots like to "joust" with their beaks as a form of friendly playfighting. Now, despite my love of birds, I am not an ornithologist and I couldn't find any accounts of young parrots biting to establish boundaries, as dogs do, but I think it's within the realm of possibility. So, Uchiha babies like to bite *everything* including people. Like if you think human children are bad about putting things in their mouths...it's nothing to these baby birds. Parents encourage it and biting becomes a form of nonverbal communication before they can speak. Small happy nibbles vs angry gumming. When put with their age mates the biting continues. Only now they're starting to learn biting can hurt (bc now they're being bit by other kids) and when it can be used to express frustration with others. It is comparatively violent, but is anyone surprised at this point? Around 5 biting is slowly discouraged and it's expected to stop by 8, mainly because it's not a good instinct in battle. Getting in that close/vulnerable of a position to an enemy is too dangerous when weapons/jutsu are a better alternative. But frustrated children sometimes fall back on old habits and Madara was a *very* bitey child. Biting does return in budding sexuality, love bites are q literal, but we're not quite there yet lol.
> 
> I also post more HashiMada stuff on [Tumblr](https://mira--mira.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! It means a lot to me! <3


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